A season of sorrows unending -- the Cerberus Files
by LogicalPremise
Summary: A collection of Cerberus documents detailing the early history of the Systems Alliance , alien cultures and military forces, and the organization and true goals of Cerberus. Tied into my alternative universe fics (Of Sheep and Battlechicken) and quite dark. Sort of my take on Renegade Reinterpretations, except more like 'bloodthirsty lunatic reinterpretations with an axe'.
1. Chapter 1 - Introduction

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Per your request, I've completed my econo-historical analysis of Citadel space. Working with Dr. Uraj and Dr. Nielson-Kahn, we've attempted to pull together coherent studies , military data, and relevant cultural analysis on all current threats to Humanity.

I remain puzzled by your initial request, a 'neutral-observer' historical overview of humanity since the early 21st century, but I've complied with that as well. The outline covers every event until the most recent assault on Eden Prime, per your instructions.

The studies of alien species include the psychological workups requested by the Illusive Man required heavy use of the Shadow Cell's .. experimental projects. I would again like to (respectfully) recommend full review of said projects – we're an organization devoted to human supremacy, not goddamned terrorists.

We lost several of our Trojan operatives compiling this data, which has set back the Illusive Cell's forecast projections. As a result, we've been ordered to use resources from Shadow Cell and Iron Cell to make up the shortfall. Hopefully, the insight from this document will further the Illusive Cell's operative ability to find areas of manipulation in alien stock markets and investment opportunities.

Dr. Galen Minsta

**Cerberus Thought of the Day: **A mind empty of it's duty to humanity is fertile ground for the weeds of alien corruption.

* * *

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

HERA-THREE-NINE-NINE-SIX

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To Dr. Minsta,

Excellent work, Doctor. This is exactly the sort of thing we need to ensure our focus remains on the topic at hand – the bright future awaiting humanity.

Your comments regarding the direction of the Shadow Cell's work, however, were not well received by the Shadow Hand. While I understand and sympathize with your frustrations, we keep each cell tightly segregated not just due to security, but so that those with the taste for certain kinds of work are put where they can contribute the most.

You are a psychological historian, not a general, a financier, or a researcher. If you knew what we knew, you'd be less upset at the cost victory sometimes requires.

Illusive Man

* * *

**Cerberus Thought of the Day: **The opposite of sadism is altruism, but the opposite of nihilism is mania. We must all remember never to cross lines that leave scars, and never to avoid a hard act in the name of mercy.

* * *

**Author's Note: **_My main fic story, Of Sheep and Battle Chicken (OsaBC) is set in an alternative universe to the 'canon' Mass Effect. My initial intent with the story was to do a 'show, not tell' reinterpretation, similar to but with a different focus than _Renegade Reinterpretations.

_While my fic has been moderately successful, (and I appreciate those who like it), I feel that going into the depths of differences robs the story of it's vitality. In order to see why things are the way they are, back story – true back story – is needed. The Codex was a nice idea but didn't go far enough into where things needed to be discussed. And frankly, the irreconcilability of the Codex with the reality of what we see in the game only points to the greater disconnect. For all the rich lore in the Codex, shockingly little of it is used. _

_The purpose of this document is to outline the AU world I work in. It is a more renegade place, if that word has any meaning at all, which I doubt. The difference between Paragon and Renegade is that Paragons do things the right way, and Renegades do things any way that achieves what they want. Not all good is nice, and not all bad is evil. But at the end of the day, both Paragons and Renegades end up doing the right thing. _

_Even some of the darkest fics out there, such as RR , set humanity as taking rough or even horrific actions because they had no real rational choice. Renegades do what must be done, right or wrong, because there are no other choices. Shepard didn't make the call on Torfan because of anything else than being too bloodthirsty and perhaps too compromised by events. All the 'evil people' are neatly put into little terrorist groups so you can kill them without having to argue the grey-and-grey morality of things._

_The Premiseverse dispenses with such rose-eyed sentimentality. People do what is evil, because it's the quickest way to power, and damn the consequences. Paragons like Branson due so mostly because people worship heroes, but they have no belief in their own actions. Renegades like Shepard are so broken by what has occurred to them that they would be sociopaths in any other society, where killing is merely another reflex response and regret NEVER stops them from pulling the trigger again. _

_Humans are evil, most are either xenophobic or distrustful, and all see themselves as innately superior. Sneering at aliens who took a thousand years to do what humanity did in a century, they are still bearing the scars of a century of the darkest, sickest warfare in human history, where two madmen fought each other to a standstill to determine the fate of the world, and sixty million innocent souls died in a single, horrific day due to chemical warfare by a doomsday cult. The SA is a brutal regime, a good old boys club that has plans to dominate the galaxy in short order, seeing all before it as the modern equivalent of the Chinese during the medieval ages – stagnant and dead. _

_Salarians are disassociated from the morality of acts by the speed of mental processing and the logic they are bound to, and do not even have a word in their language for morals. Obsessed with control, with knowing all there is to know, their government is at war with itself, as dalatrasses lost in the evolutionary drive to further their families risk killing their own race with mad genetic sabotage. Much of their energies are wasted on this intercede warfare, their own intelligence justifying it with the brutal realities that efficiency tops all other concerns. Unable and unwilling to compromise on their concept of total war, they have planned ways to kill off or neutralize every other race in the galaxy, some through horrific research into genophage-like viruses, others through carefully prepared infowar. _

_Asari are going through a cultural civil war, as some asari have become obsessed with humanity – the chances of a race looking and being shaped almost exactly like them being so small as to be impossible. Sexual and social tensions have turned the asari against themselves, as asari grow tired of suppressing their naturally guiding natures and desire to sleep with and have children with at least something that looks like them. They want a humanity that is a kneeling, adoring slave of the asari, willing to be it's cats paws, brute muscle and sex slaves. Worse still, a cult of Ardat-Yakshi worshipers has developed a method by which low-axis A/Y can meld with other asari without killing them, although it leaves the other asari ravaged, mentally dependent and addicted (and usually dead after a third or fourth melding). This cult , much like Morinth, sees the ability to meld and dominate as not only genetic destiny, but the key to asari dominance. _

_The turians never recovered from the Colony Wars, becoming more bitter, more hidebound, and above all else, more schizophrenic. Their colonial tensions run higher and higher as the meritocracy is diluted by the play of politics and the subtle sabotage of salarian and asari agents. There are those who remember the resurgence of the Valluvian Priests under Desolas Arterius, and feel the government is suppressing turian culture. Worse, the Council's support of humanity has enraged many turians, the First Contact War being far more brutal of a lesson to Turians and the raging threats of the human ambassadors still leaving an unpleasant taste to the mouth. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Salarians and Asari have compromised the Turian economy, leaving the Hierarchy in debt to the other two races to the tune of billions upon billions of credits. _

_The Batarians are not just slavers, but a religious movement bound into the Fist of Khar'shan that prophesies the destruction of all enemies of the batarians. This religion is tied in with the strange reactions of the upper Batarian military castes, who since the recovery of the Leviathan of Dis have been acting... strangely. Worse, their biotics are drugged, super-augmented religious fanatics, more than capable of facing down even asari matriarchs...and they claim they hear the voice of the Fist in their dreams. _

_The Hanar fascination with the Protheans is magnified to unhealthy degrees, and their Drell servants are pawns in a game of intergalactic chess. The geth are no simple machines, the quarians are more vicious and selfish, and perhaps worst of all, the fall of the krogan was not simply done at the hands of salarians and turians, but one of their own._

_This is a universe where cynicism , petty revenge, and hustling for a credit are the norm. Every race has been victimized, and the evil in the hearts of people is not suppressed for the sake of the common good , as the common good is rarely seen. _

_Humanity's shining hero, the Savior of Elysium, is a fraud, a human supremacist, and a megalomaniac, a constructed figure who would happily butcher aliens but actually sees himself as a heroic messiah. It's Butcher is a criminal psychopath turned unfeeling killing machine, made a hero when a SA plot to get her unit killed blew up in their faces and then used to brutally suppress any threat.. The Sole Survivor is a broken figure, losing his family, his unit, his fiance and finally his sanity and becoming a terrorist threat to rival Cerberus, convinced only he understands the sacrifices needed to bring humanity to a shining future – of human dominance. _

_The other races commit atrocities worse than anything in canon ME : salarians experiment with asari captives to lengthen their own lifespan, and turian Blackwatch units support pirates to drive volus separatists back into the Hierarchy's arms. Biotic cults , secretly backed by asari matriarchs, infiltrate alien societies, scattering Ardat-Yakshi as they go to weaken the upper classes of their foes. Batarians play with Reaper tech in their slave implants, and the volus scheme to destabilize economic markets and amass increasingly worrisome amounts of mercenaries for no known purpose. _

_Colonies are written off, refused even the slightest protection from the SA if they do not bow to heavy taxes, mental conditioning, and constant monitoring. Earth is a polluted cesspit, the mass of humanity living in massive arcologies stuffed to explosive overpopulation, ruled by iron fisted 'democracies' where only those with the money to prove their history can vote. The SA is a private club of member nations and early colonies that only allows newer members the right to pay a larger share of taxes for the minimum protection possible._

_Mega-corporations are small nations-states, Noveria an armed presence that shoots Spectres on sight and has stood off the Citadel Fleets twice. The average colonist is an indentured servant, required to pay back his 'citizenship tithes' and 'colony debt fee' before he can even vote , bunkered in communal flophouses and worked 15 hours a day, and is pathetically grateful for it, since at least he has a chance to one day own a home and not pay 85% tax rates , or be shot on sight for protesting._

_The SA's armies are stiffened by penal legions, with explosive implants in their head. Sniper-guards enforce their discipline, and biotic commissars drive them to fight, or to die at their hands. Political officers and bio-monitor systems monitor military officers, and the darkness between the stars is so much greater – the Reapers control not one galaxy, but dozens, and are hiding from something with the power to snuff out entire galaxies at a whim. _

_And yet .. hope can still flare brightly. There are those who refuse to bow to despair, to greed, to hatred and fear and the erosion of spirit. There are those who long for freedom, who dream of a bright future where all races work together. There are corporations who refuse to commit atrocities, gang lords who won't enslave children, even serial killers, barely in control of themselves, who force themselves to prey on evil men instead of the innocent. And even humanity's vilest sorts can have flashes of conscience on occasion. _

_In the end, which is more inspiring? The banality of doing the right thing when it's rewarded, or the light that refused to be smothered by the darkness all around it?_

* * *

_Part I and II is a review of human history, including the Sao Paulo riots and the Purge of Iron. It is an attempt to explain why humanity and the SA are so much more brutal , as well as the human position in the galaxy due to their high-stakes maneuvering after the First Contact War. Warning: if you thought RR would make you rage, this will make you literally **scream**. Part I covers from 2020 to the edge of the First Contact War, Part II from the FCW to the start of ME 1. _

_Part III goes into the asari – culture, military, economics, and siari. The asari sexuality is explored more deeply – sex and melding for them is akin to gossip and male bonding activities for humans. The pureblood , Ardat-Yakshi, and biotic supremacist cults, as well as the Thirty Families, are also discussed. _

_Part IV covers the turians. The Colony Wars and the careful demolition of turian unity by alien forces is covered, as well as the turian military structure, turian government, and the Valluvian priesthood._

_Part V covers the salarians, in particular, salarian mental differences, clan and caste politics, and the viewpoint of the dalatrasses and their secret evolutionary war. _

_Part VI covers the vorcha and the volus. _

_Part VII covers the elcor and the hanar._

_Part VIII covers the batarians._

_Part IX covers the organization of Cerberus and Janus_

_Part X covers the alien analogs of Cerberus – the Asari Night-wind, Salarian Group of None, Turian Deathwatch, the Volus VDFT, the Batarian Special Intervention Unit, and , perhaps worst of all, the Drell Remembrance Dancers. _

_Part XI covers the truth behind the Reapers, the Darkness, and just how screwed the universe is. **Giggle** _


	2. Chapter 2 - Human history before the FCW

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Enclosed is the time line and historical amplification, as requested. It covers the period from 2020 until the First Contact War.

The current state of the Systems Alliance is due to the traumatic experiences humanity suffered from 2024 through 2070. In a more perfect or ideal world, perhaps such experiences would not have occurred, but in such a world our readiness for meeting aliens would have been much less as well.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** No man that died in the service of Humanity died in vain, and every man who falls at the alien's hand is a matyr.

* * *

**THE AGES OF STRIFE : 2019 through 2071**

The 2020's and 2030's were fraught with rampant terrorism, both Muslim and Christian fundamentalist in nature. These attacks soured the American and European public on patience in dealing with terrorist threats, but also drove the US and China closer together, culminating in many treaties and adjustments in how the world's superpowers viewed each other. This culminated in the United States and China signing the Bilateral Arms Treaty. The BAT was a mutual non-aggression pact mixed with anti-terrorism elements, as Muslim extremist actions have become a thorn in the side of both nations that cannot be further ignored. Conspiracy theorists rant about New World Order tactics.

When the Hand of Allah detonated Ebola-laced virus bombs in downtown Barcelona, the world was stunned. Originally believed to be mere small bombs, within a few days tens of thousands of people were dead. Over the course of seven weeks, over two and a half million people lost their lives. The group Hand of Allah took responsibility, claiming that if Allah's will is not followed, they were prepared to end the entire world.

A few days after the broadcast, a second bio-weapon was let loose in Tel Aviv. Panic was rampant, but the Israeli government sealed the city. Rather than allow the disease to spread unchecked, the very next day a nuclear weapon was detonated in Tel Aviv, incinerating all known infected. Speculation ran rampant over who could have done such a thing, until the Israeli government broadcast the truth – one of their own military officers did it, to stop the spread of the disease from killing the rest of the state of Israel.

Only a few weeks later, in a stunning coup, the entire royal Saud family was assaulted, captured, and executed by the Hand of Allah. Citing passages from the Hadith and interpretations from extremist imams, they declared the Third Caliphate and challenge all Muslims to rise up against oppression.

The US and China declared war on the New Caliphate empire. Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Malaysia, Pakistan and half a dozen other Muslim nations angrily refused to make war on other Muslims, and join forces.

The results were as expected. Used to a foe that would not strike with it's full power, the Caliphate and it's terrorist – religious masters were caught unprepared for the rapidity with which total war was declared. The UN called for peace talks, but the US threatened them with withdrawal, backed by China. Unable to buck prevailing trends, Russia and France attempted to reach some kind of compromise with the New Caliphate, warning them of the storm to come.

Ignoring such warnings, the Caliphate invaded Israel. They were barely two hours into their assault when B-4 Stealth bombers and hundreds of automated drones began sweeping over the cities of the Caliphate. Unwilling to negotiate with terrorists, eighteen low-yield neutron weapons were dropped. Cairo, Baghdad, Tehran and a dozen other cities were wiped of all life. At the same time, Chinese 'special forces ' – peasants blown on combat drugs and issued incendiary ammo in fully automatic weapons – stormed into Pakistan and Malaysia, parachuted into Algeria and stormed ashore in Ceylon. Tens of thousands were massacred, mosques were detonated with high explosives, water supplies wrecked and food storage facilities set afire.

The "War of Allah" lasted exactly forty-two days. At the end, every nation engaged in warfare against the US and China unconditionally surrendered. Even the most generous and positive casualty reports indicate nineteen to twenty-five million were dead, countless more poisoned with radiation or doomed to starve or die of dehydration as winter set in.

In a highly protested series of what amounted to ethnic cleansing on a grand scale, the US and China invaded, bombarded, ghettoized and conquered every nation-state from Morocco to Malaysia. China lead the effort, ostensibly and politically, stationing massive numbers of troops, encouraging immigration and investment, and taking the lead in suppressing religion and culture. But America financed it, and American companies invested in it. America's military funneled billions of dollars of military equipment to China, and America used it's own leverage to prevent the UN from stopping China.

Meanwhile, the actions of Christian fundamentalists had gotten to the point where people in America were willing to give up freedoms and privacy for the right to not be blown up. 2035 was the year that the FBI trained 25,000 ex-military into a para-military nationwide super SWAT team. Known as the Terrorist Rapid Response Unit, the TRRU was deployed daily. Meanwhile, laws and the assault on what used to be known as conservative values pushed the backers of the terrorists to more extreme acts. In 2037, the state of Montana declared it was seceding from the Union, to be a bastion for the last "Christian heritage and lifestyle, free of cultural pollution and Satan's influence."

It didn't even take 11 minutes for NORAD to clear the use of nuclear weapons. The President appeared on national television, stating once and once only that the penalty for treason was death, and anyone who stood with them would share in said penalty.

Twenty four hours later, Montana was wiped off the map. Riots ensued, the American government and FEMA declared martial law. In Europe, NATO ejected the US, and in return Canada and Mexico stormed out of the NATO network, signing agreements with the US. By the end of 2038, the US, Mexico and Canada were one informal unit. Still three countries on paper, Mexico supplied raw labor and Canada raw materials to the American war machine.

The rest, of course, is history no one wishes to revisit. The increasing hostility of the world meant that madmen were overlooked, and the popularity and charisma of Miguel de la Ardiente didn't seem to be a problem at first. Rising to power in a Brazil that was surging in economy, his rapid political maneuvering and the power of his Esperanza political party was seen as a positive thing. And at the beginning, perhaps it was.

But the state of South America was dire, it's people abused by petty warlords and drug trades, it's economy weak. When Ardiente made his move to dominate and annex Argentina in the aftermath of it's civil war, no one complained. When he invaded Columbia to take down the drug lords and added it to the Nueva Brazilla, people cheered. When he made fiery speeches about the heritage of the Maya, the Olmec, and the proud history of the south American, from Bolivar to Peron, the people went wild.

And the uniforms went from camo, to black and green. The education reforms became re-education camps. The Catholic faith was carefully subverted to encourage submission, piety as patriotism, and racial distrust. Children were brainwashed, those who disagreed jailed or merely 'vanished', and the news media in the region became nothing more than Ardiente's mouthpiece.

As the wars tore apart the middle east, and America fought internal rebellions, no one paid enough attention to the darkness growing in Brazil until it was far too late. Ardiente declared himself Emperor in 2046, and began openly attacking and invading the remaining countries in South America. Aside from sending troops to reinforce the Mexican border with central America, the US did nothing.

The European Union splintered helplessly in 2050, with Russia and Germany facing down France, Italy and Poland over banking reforms, debts, and investment capital. Plagues swept through Pacifica, killing millions. Riots over food broke out in the Middle East, and nuclear weapons were detonated in a second terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed hundreds of thousands. The backlash was criminal, tens of thousands of civilians shot and killed.

By 2052, it seemed the end times had come. Victor Manswell, worlds richest man, frustrated, began funding heavy space exploration, starting with the moon. In two short years he'd established a working base, on a lavish scale, where he promptly moved to. Calling it the Zurich Holdfast, in the next year thousands more millionaires followed him.

Meanwhile, the environment continued to worsen. Using recent developments in technology, the US, Europe, and China began encasing their biggest cities in arcologies, piecemeal building the massive constructions. The nuclear cleansing committed by the US and Chinese forces had choked the air with polluted fallout, and the poor died by the thousands as money only went towards ensuring the upper middle class and rich are protected. More people fled to the space colonies, as Manswell's Solar System Alliance was founded, a loose group of human survivalist colonies on the Moon and, in 2056, on Mars and several asteroids as well.

Events came to a horrific head in 2060, when 'Emperor' Ardiente allied with the drugs lords he had been fighting the whole time, bringing in terrorist networks and religious supremacists. He welcomed the anti-US survivalist Christian fundamentalist fringe, and even reached out to the remains of the Hand of Allah, pointing out that in a godless world the godly must stick together. His charisma allowed him to sway the minds of millions of poverty stricken Third World peoples as he gave railing, thundering speeches about the callous nature of the "white imperialist governments" who he blamed for ruining the oceans, the air, and the land.

Emperor Ardiente created a loose association of rogue states, sub-Saharan pirate gangs and brutal warlords, backed by the money of a fading, jealous Japan in secret and by drug lords in private. He bent the industrial might of his empire towards warfare and mandated 12% conscription on top of the volunteer army.

Mercenaries and gangs of ethnically displaced African and Afghan fighters bolster his ranks, while rogue scientists from the former Caliphate boosted his technological capability, bringing nuclear weapons plans and more. On November 24th, 2060, when Americans were fat and dumb with food and watching football and the Chinese are just waking up, the Brazilla Emperor attacked.

A carefully orchestrated plan of terrorist attacks on power plants, dams, and fuel depots crippled America and China minutes after the declaration of war. The first appearance of the Sao Paulo death squads appeared, maddened by combat drugs, religious fanatics high on epiphany and PCP, equipped with body armor and fully automatic weapons. Much like America and China did in their war against the Caliphate, the Sao Paulo death squads went berserk in cities across the globe, detonating bombs laced with an air-transmitted virus that mutates lung cells into basal cancer cells. They struck at nurseries and elementary schools, they blew up the innocent and helpless, they made the average citizen cringe in fear.

The US and China fought back, hard, but Brazil was no Caliphate, lightly defended and with too much infrastructure to protect. Ardiente had dug himself into the Andes, using the past twenty years to harden his defenses, and the drug lords and mercenaries knew they would be killed if they try to surrender, so their fighting spirit is fierce. Worse, his own people believed in his propaganda, an entire generation having been the product of careful, slow brainwashing.

Slowly, over the next nine months, the Chinese and US armies battled their way through Ardiente's forces, the Sao Paulo squads executing anyone who refuses to fight even while some continue to infiltrate other countries to wreak terror.

Three million died in battle, millions more from wounds, disease, or starvation. The death toll of civilians was lost after the third outbreak of Ebola Zaire and anthrax. Europe collapsed in bloody ethnic civil war, Greece was consumed in flames. Ardiente seeded his religious fanatics across the globe, telling them this was the time of Revelations, to end the world and welcome Jesus, who will take up the Emperor's body and rule mankind for a thousand years of light.

It took a six day battle to level Sao Paulo and kill the beast, the Emperor fighting off multiple attackers. He died atop his own palace, shot over forty times, nose bloody from cocaine, eyes wild with crazed knowledge. Seventeen SEAL's and fourteen Chinese SSPD went down killing the monster, but the nightmare was over.

Until the next day, when his "Saints of the Bowls" detonated 13 backpack nuclear devices. Vatican City was destroyed. Mecca and Bethlehem ruined. London's Buckingham Palace was leveled, the entire royal family killed. Beijing and Washington DC both get hit multiple times, the governments of both nations destroyed in the chaos. Order collapsed, as bickering factions fought for power. The sky darkened from pollution and more nuclear fires. Millions, then tens of millions, died of starvation, of thirst, of engineered disease.

Even the best historians only know that order was restored in 2071, as Victor Manswell's private mercenary security forces slowly began restoring some semblance of order. China had fragmented into warring nation states, and the US was collapsing into bickering factions, with no federal government left to unite them.

* * *

**THE AGES OF CONTROL: 2071 to 2157**

The iron will of Victor Manswell is all that drew humanity back from the brink. Hiring up mercenaries and paying with gold, arms, and medical supplies, he moved swiftly to secure dominance. Aided by manufacturies in orbit, Manswell first worked through what surviving nations with infrastructure remained – Japan, parts of Central Africa, the state of Alaska, and so on. His mercenaries raided universities to rescue scientists, broke into military bases to recover arms and heavy vehicles, and co-opted governments with bribes.

It took almost three years, of fighting, starvation, and turmoil, but in 2074 the New United Nations Council formally surrendered control to Manswell's Solar Systems Alliance. The SSA moved in quickly, offering generous terms to those nations who agreed to it's mandates, and hard punishments for those that defied them.

Manswell had not been idle, using the chaos of war to snatch up resources. His researchers had built the first reconfigurable nanite construction robots in 2068, and these enabled him to build rapidly. Expanding using leapfrogging techniques and pre-built habitation and mining modules, his SSA had colonized over fifty asteroids by 2071. Using a mix of primitive ion engines and solar sails, he soon had a steady flow of raw materials flowing back to manufacturies in orbit, and on the Moon. Iron, nickel, bauxite, and aluminum he stacks up in huge repositories, dumping them into his manufacturies, producing habitation modules, wind power towers, and base-camp reclamation modules for the survival of millions of displaced persons on earth.

His rescue (or capture, according to some) of many scientists from top facilities enabled him to focus all their efforts on pure research. In 2072, his factories began producing powered battle armor, and in 2075, the first primitive research VI's came online. VI's control clouds of nanotech building robots, while more nano-constructed cleaning swarms go to work on pollution. Thousands of tons of polluted soil are dumped onto the icy center of Antarctica, while asteroids were broken down and chemically enriched in orbital centers to produce 'new' dirt.

By 2080, the SSA had resettled and controls Japan, most of southern China, the eastern and southern US, central and west Canada, northern Mexico, England, most of France, Italy, and sections of central and southern Africa. Remaining government forces in the US, claiming federal rights, tried to resist his push into Texas and Colorado, but men in vests and armed with M-16's are no match for power-armor troops, armed with laser carbines and plasma grenades. The fight was short, bloody and a wake up call for those nations still holding out against the SSA's power.

It was in the aftermath of these short fights that Manswell, now in his eighties, decided to accelerate his control and ensure world peace. Using the manufacturies, he expanded the arcologies aggressively, building the foundations for over two hundred of them, as well as renovating the highway systems of the US and Europe towards massive, sealed expressways for both ground cars and hi-speed mag-rails. In rural areas of the US, China, and much of South America, he built 'farm arcologies' – massive, forty story fortresses that held floor after floor of genetically modified crops grown under lamps and huge assembly lines for livestock. Desalination and water treatment facilities were constructed along major shorelines, pumping billions of gallons of electrically-cracked and purified water inland to parched areas.

The cost of this endeavor was staggering, even given the vast wealth achieved by the use of asteroid mining. Manswell's scientists achieved 'cool' fusion using magnetically reinforced tokamaks in 2084, and in 2086 he built a ring of solar panel studded energy satellites, beaming energy down to the earth to specially reinforced power centers. But no matter how much raw energy and material he had, the economies of Earth's nations were strained, and the fledgling colonies struggled under heavy taxes.

Inevitably, there were revolts and backlashes, and every time the SSA reacted with heavier reprisals and crackdowns. His private mercenaries were formalized in 2091 as the Iron Guard, with a simplified rank system of seven ranks that is still reflected in SA military organization (soldier, chief, master chief, lieutenant, captain, commander, general). The military expanded until almost six percent of humanity was under arms, and improvements in weapons technology – particular beam energy weapons – meant that the simple weapons most civilians had were no match for the military's response.

Rebellions flared in the ruins of the Middle East, in India, in the western US – all crushed in blood reprisals. The SSA did not tolerate terrorists, and every act was responded to with the capture of the terrorists, torture, and the utter destruction of whatever group or area that sponsored them. When a terrorist cell managed to severely damage a food arcology in 2095, it was traced back to a complicated group of agents in Spain, funded by what was left of the Spanish government.

Manswell, now 97 and near death, passed instructions to his heir, his grandson Jacen Manswell. The SSA formed an investigative council into the attacks, and once the perpetrators were fully identified, the massed might of the SSA military and Iron Guard fell upon Spain. Sixteen million people were brutally murdered in two weeks of shelling, orbital bombardment, and ground invasions, and Madrid obliterated by multiple days of high explosive artillery fire.

Even as Madrid burned, Jacen Manswell took to the newswaves, announcing changes. The time of nation-states was at an end, and the time for humanity to unite behind one banner was upon them. He announced the Systems Alliance, the unification of all human endeavors under one government, was imminent. This was announced as the Purge of Iron, and Manswell warned that resistance would lead to nothing but death.

Those nations who had supported the SSA in it's attempts to restore world order would be rewarded. USA, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdoms, France, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Thailand, India, Germany, and Italy would be rewarded with permanent member status in the new Systems Alliance, and would have votes in it's parliament. Their citizens would be given priority, they would get arcologies built first and they would get the first crack at any colonization efforts.

Other nations, who had not been cooperative, would be disbanded into administrative districts administered directly by the SA itself. These administrative districts would be controls by the SA but this would at least involve some local officials from the governments in those areas. Over time, given a track record of support, the administrative areas would be allowed self governance as associate members of the SA.

Those nations who had hindered the SSA the most – Bolivia, North Korea, Spain, Norway, Algeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Pakistan – would be obliterated. Even as he spoke, the SSA military was moving on those locations, starting with attacks on the capitals and laying waste to the countryside.

Victor Manswell died in 2099, and it took the newly formed SA, along with the member state militaries, another ten years to subdue the rest of the planet permanently. The results were not as destructive to the environment as the war against the Brazilla Emperor, but tens of millions died all the same. It was brutal, sickening, and in the eyes of the leaders of the SA, necessary.

The spring of 2109 was the first year of the Systems Alliance uncontested control of Earth. The administrative districts – Azlan in South America, Swaha in northern Africa, Momba in southern Africa, Chazi in Asia – would over time, be able to administer themselves, as the plan went. Most of those regions were depopulated by war and famine now, and Manswell acted to build additional farm arcologies and military bases in them.

In 2103, the Mars Colony became fully self-sufficient, and was admitted to the SA as a member colony. Luna, Ceres Asteroid, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Callisto soon followed. The SA formed a semi-bicameral arrangement, and left most matters to the nations or administrative areas, focusing instead on space colonization. Despite the deep wounds of the wars and Manswell's brutal conquest of the planet, people wanted to put it all behind them.

Jacen Manswell aided in that, turning much of the Iron Guard out to serve as police forces, and spending vast sums on boosting civilian comfort. The arcologies were expanded again, allowing more people to move from the now execrable conditions on Earth's open areas. Radiation storms, pollution, and UV radiation from ozone losses had made the world less habitable, and something on the order of ten to twenty million people a year died from cancers and other pollution related diseases from 2100 to 2120. Manswell did what he could to alleviate this, with medical centers and nanotechnology research, but by 2130 anyone not living in an arcology on earth was probably dead.

The period from 2120 to 2140 was relatively quiet, as a new generation was born that knew nothing but living in arcologies, that knew nothing of war or of national sovereignty. Manswell was careful not to suppress people too hard – loosening some of the controls of the SSA's early years, and allowing the nations that made up the SA to regain some power and dignity. At the same time, he played the colonies against Earth, the member nations against the administrative areas, and the rich and powerful against each other.

With all of the major cities of earth (any city with more than 20,000 people, and many large metro areas such as DFW, Minneapolis/St. Paul, etc combined into one massive arcology) sealed into arcologies, and with travel restricted to the tube-ways and to expensive armored aircraft or special armored ships, the Internet was used to tie people together and foster communication. All such communications were monitored by the SA, and the media as a force almost died off altogether, replaced by civilian reporters, news aggrigators, and government information agencies. The largest media outlets combined in 2135 to form Westerlund News, while dozens of smaller outlets and information groups were combined by the SA to create the Alliance News Network.

Industry was advancing as well, as Ashland-Eldfell managed to extract HE3 from Jupiter and Saturn in 2137. The use of this more concentrated fuel source allowed much heavier colonization of the solar system, and even the moons of Uranus and Neptune. Meanwhile, the first primitive iterations of second-tier VI's were under production, and researchers felt certain true AI would not be far behind.

In 2141, Jacen Manswell resigned from the SA Presidency, stating that his father's dream had been completed. He declined to state what his plans were, spent several days putting his affairs in order and having sparkling social parties, and, after a long conversation with his son and heir, shot himself on March 5, 2141. His suicide manifesto – some eight pages long – spoke of his guilt at the horrors he and his grandfather had committed to bring Earth to unified peace. "The only difference between myself and Miguel de la Ardiente is that I did not have the confidence to place a crown on my head, and that I won and he lost. Humanity can suffer no more megalomaniacs, no more emperors, and no more wars against our own kind. Darkness comes, and we must be unified to fight it."

The meaning of his words – and what he knew – was debated at length by many. It's known his scientist corps on Mars was doing some kind of research, and that at least one team simply vanished. We know now, after review of certain documents, that Manswell's researchers had come across the Prothean Ruins at Deseado Crater.

They were not announced until 2143, and the discovery of element zero changed everything about the SA and human society. For one, humanity realized it was not alone in the universe.

The Mars Cache contained tons upon tons of eezo, plans for mass effect drives, and information about the nature of the galaxy. It took almost four years for humanity to decrypt and build prototypes, but in 2148, following the information from the cache, SA Explorer Corps teams shatter Charon, revealing the mass relay there. Once activated, Jon Grissom is the first of a team of explorers in the SAV Enterprise, triggering the Mass Relay and erupting into Arcturus, over thirty light years away, in an instant. The explorers discover that the mass relays are part of a vast network, making travel across the galaxy possible.

The SA began expansion of it's war fleet immediately, while corporations on earth scrambled to prepare for take advantage of the bounty. Earth was already overstressed by it's population, and the colonies could not take much more population with their limited resources, but now humanity could walk among the stars themselves.

In the haste to prepare exploratory spaceships, accidents were bound to happen. Several freighters and transports had accidents in Earth's atmosphere in this period, and several of these occurred in the arcologies themselves, dusting the population with eezo. Many children born after that point have cancerous growths, but at the time this is seen merely as a tragedy. It happened again, at Singapore Spaceport, and a third time, at Dresden Spaceport, leading to over half a million deaths and around 2 million people exposed to the dust.

In 2150, Terra Nova, Eden Prime, and Demeter are all opened to colonization. The rush to space began and ramped up from there. Arcturus Station was built, mainly to defend the key jump link to Earth, but also to serve as a massive military base station for the SA itself. The Zurich Holdfast, the former location of the SA Government, is still too vulnerable to assault by GTS missiles, and in 2151 the SA government moves to Arcturus Station, expanding it fourfold in doing so.

Colonization rushed on, with explorer teams opening new mass relays every month. By 2157, Earth had sixteen colonies, and the first stage of the SA war fleet was complete. Experiments with eezo had led to the creation of personalized mass effect barriers and mass accelerated weapons, and in 2157 the first 'battleship', the SSV Vulcan, was launched at Arcturus Station.

It was also in 2157 that infants whose mothers were survivors of the eezo dustings began showing signs of biotic ability. The SA quickly figured out that eezo exposure in utero caused these bizarre abilities, and the effects seemed similar, if more powerful, than the abilities created by the eezo-laced red dust drug that had sprung up in 2155.

With it's eyes on the future, the SA began identifying these children, planning for some form of training and to learn the limits of this biotic ability. But destiny interfered.


	3. Chapter 3 - Human History after the FCW

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Enclosed is the time line and historical amplification, as requested. It covers the period from 2020 until the First Contact War.

After the excesses of our early history, and the savage, sickening betrayals endured during First Contact, it is no wonder that humanity has a dim view of other races. There are those who think the asari should be held in high regard for restraining the turians. I believe that the asari acted in their own devious interests, keen to see a humanity prostrate and grateful before them, and that it would have been better to fight turians to the death, even to the ruination of all humanity, than submit to the hand of the alien.

But I digress. Let us investigate those days.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **A human decides his path based on his best interest, the slave allows himself to believe the alien has his best interest in mind.

* * *

**THE AGES OF XENOS : 2157 to 2160**

The Systems Alliance wild expansion through systems linked by mass relays was checked by the fact that every relay the Explorer Corps came across was 'cold'. The notes of the Prothean Archive on Mars had given the needed instructions , transmitted in high energy bursts of radiowaves, to reactivate a relay.

But the Systems Alliance military was always nervous about such things, never knowing what might lie on the far side of such a relay. Thus, two policies were enacted, not long after the completion of Arcturus Station. The first policy is that only the SA could unlock and activate relays, and that this was never done without strong support from the fleet. The second is that whenever new relays were opened, the relay leading deeper into the SA would be shut down. Since activating a relay took almost a full solar day, this would give SA forces time to prepare if the far side of an exploration went wrong.

The massive SA fleet, still being upgraded to use mass effect technologies, was split into several subfleets. A good fourth of the navy's power was spread around the Solar System, to enforce SA law, and another fourth was pushed forward behind the Explorer Corps to act as a bulwark against invading aliens who might come through a relay unexpectedly.

The other half of the fleet was stationed in Arcturus, to act as a ready reserve. The SA fortified the entire star system, turning it into a massive warzone , restricted only to SA military forces and the elite of the SA leadership.

Although the Manswells were not leading the SA anymore, the plan of Jacen Manswell remained the SA's template for development. They pushed into neighboring systems, rounded up colonists from the areas of Earth that were the least developed, and stuck them on ships to begin terraforming and building. Since only the SA knew the secret of opening the mass relays, all of human exploration and commerce was conducted at the SA's sufferance.

When Shanxi was colonized, the SA was debating how much longer it could continue operating it's fleet on a war footing with no aliens in sight. Given the ruinous cost in HE3 and eezo, not to mention spare parts, salaries, and downtime to keep the fleet running at full capacity, some two years after Shanxi was settled, half the SA fleet was mothballed. Research into the Prothean Ruins and development of technology was happening so fast that retrofitting existing ships to use the new technology would be just as expensive as simply building new ones.

Some of these mothballed ships would be set aside in Arcturus, many were de-militarized and put up for sale to the megacorps of Earth. As such, for the first time, some corporate forces began sending their own colony groups to less habitable worlds, establishing mining colonies and deep-space construction facilities.

After three years of expansion and refitting, the Explorer Corps got around to opening the far relay in the Shanxi system.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__I will finish this part up, but I'm currently re-writing it , and I have some of the asari stuff ready to go. Thus, this chapter will be a placeholder until I finish it and update it. _


	4. Chapter 4 - Asari History

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Asari history is a cesspit, one that makes me feel deeply filthy and offended. The asari are no mysterious zen maidens, but feral savages, sex-obsessed and splintered by psychology and social structures into quibbling bands that only agree on how to manipulate those around them.

Although their history is quite lengthy, the focus of this document will be only on the most broad aspects of how it has shaped their culture.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **The Martyr's grave is the foundation of Humanity. Survival is it's own glory.

* * *

**Historical Overview: Ancient evolutionary history**

From what paleontological research has uncovered, the asari evolved from a group of semi-amphibian mammals on the world of Thessia. The seas of Thessia, awash in eezo from a series of massive asteroids strikes, lead to not only much higher rates of mutation but strange levels of adaptation to rapidly changing climatic shifts.

The asari ancestor was a bizarre cross between what would be considered mammalian and reptilian characteristics for Terran animals. Endothermic and bearing live young, the proto-asari were most similar to something like ichthyosaurs at some point. When an ice age lowered sea temperatures, killing off certain algae-analogues that enhanced the oxygen content of the ocean, they began the long road to evolving away from living in the sea.

Upon becoming fully amphibian, the proto-asari continued to evolve, moving more and more towards mammalian ideals. Some twenty nine million years ago, these proto-asari evolved legs and began moving inland from the oceans. They slowly moved towards brachiating arboreal hunters, using primitive bursts of biotic energy to stun prey and lurking in the many rivers and small lakes or ponds in the Thessian forest climes.

There is evidence that the asari had evolved to a form similar to their current form as early as three million years ago. Like all Thessian life forms, heat management was critical – submersion in the sea could help with such, but most land animals, due to the high levels of humidity and generally high temperatures, had problems with overheating, leading to the highly efficient head crests and the split-spinal arrangements with heat venting.

There is also evidence that the Protheans may have interfered with asari development, based on some of the texts found in the Mars Archive. These materials were removed early on, due to the Manswell Doctrine, and our researchers at the Mars Facility only have partial copies to work from. The gist of the information seems to suggest the Protheans shaped and altered asari and human evolution towards more congruent paths – certainly, no other races have the same similarity of features, down to both humans and asari having eyelashes, ears, etc. The purpose of this isn't known at this time, all we do know is that the fossil records show rapid changes in asari evolution from about 80,000 to roughly 50,000 years ago, moving from a semi-amphibian, partially erect form with features more similar to fish to a basically human looking being, fully upright, with the only vestiges of aquatic ancestry being faintly scaled skin and slight webbing of the hands and feet.

* * *

**Prehistorical Age: the rise of the Thirty**

Asari historians and practitioners of the old asari religions both maintain that some form of greater being – be that of divine nature or merely some kind of aliens – took part in early asari history. The worship of Athame and other asari goddesses appears to be central in their ancient history.

The earliest civilized asari were organized into hunting clans, ranging across both land and sea. Natural powerful swimmers and innate hunters, the early asari mainly focused around two regions – the coastal areas in the northern continent, and the wet arboreal forests in both the north and south. Asari more inland tended towards more purple coloration, while asari closer to the eezo choked seas remained the color of element zero, a bright, striking blue. In any event, asari in both regions subsisted mostly on hunting-gathering, rather than any form of agriculture, for millennial, and there was very little organization in such groups.

At some point 'Athame', in their history, taught the early asari about fire, agriculture, mathematics, logic, and astronomy. These innovations were only taught to a handful of the hunting clans, which rapidly grew in power and size as their relatively advanced capabilities allowed for not only much faster growth but the outright absorption of smaller clans. Eventually, these became the Thirty Families, each of which claimed a direct relationship with Athame and her guides, and founded the Thirty Cities of Thessia.

Due to the wide divide between the mountain and forest clans, and the seacoast clans, over time wealth and power accrued to the later. The Thirty were all from coastal areas, and without heavy industry or the need for large amounts of timber or ore, the mountain and forest clans had little to offer aside from meat and furs. The bounty of the seas – fish, seaweed, and a sort of whale-analogue that provide oils, bones, and meat of it's own – was matched by the ease of agricultural in the flatland near the coast, while growing in the forest and mountains was much harder. In time, this would result in a great deal of racism and discrimination, but at least in the prehistorical eras, clans tended towards their own.

**Pre-industrial age: Changes, and the ardat-yakshi**

The asari method of reproduction was similar to other animal life on Thessia, a modified XO/ZW determination system wherein genetic information in protein chains was manipulated by discrete organs connected to the nervous system. Low level mass effect manipulations of these fields could alter the based used to build the DNA chains, which themselves were tied to template protein 'ladders' that created genetic pairs for fertilized eggs. This process was low-yielding and somewhat inefficient, since it didn't ensure that all desired traits would be passed along to offspring.

Due to the high mutation levels from eezo in the oceans, however, this randomization of genetics ensured that lethal or dangerous recessive combinations did not occur even with heavy inbreeding of gene-related groups. As asari became sentient and achieved the first hints of civilization under Athame, however, the asari method of reproduction altered sharply.

Asari, unlike every other life form on Thessia, have conscious control of the mapping of genetics during sexual intercourse and fertilization. This gave the asari a staggering leap forward, moving from Darwinian models of evolution to near Lamarkian models, with parents capable of passing on acquired traits – or the basis of such traits – to their offspring. Based on experiments (see documents 44-3, asari dissection series V), there is clear evidence of high-order genetic modification in asari DNA, leading to these alterations.

It seems clear that 'Athame' changed the asari's sexual patterns, for their own good. However, two unexpected results came from this tampering, around 50,000 years ago. (The fact that the trends were not corrected and the timing of the Prothean extinction further lends credence to the idea that the Protheans were indeed tampering with the asari.)

The first change was that, due to hunter clans being able to select traits they found pleasing, the asari DNA and genetic diversity became much more homogenous. Older records of asari, and some archeological evidence, show that any differencing features (retained amphibian traits, etc) were weeded out around this time. The result seems to be that close-knit clan groupings and regional barriers created a sort of taboo about wide-spread interbreeding. Clans bred with clans living near them and like them and avoided more distant clans.

With no serious model of civilization to build upon, and the might of the Thirty Families drawing in many far and wide, it should not be surprising that the lightly civilized asari never developed the concept of the nation. Political allegiance was built on sexual relationships and the advantage of linking strong clans to weaker ones, the stronger gaining numbers, the weaker gaining technology and advancement. Each of the Thirty began to dominate areas around them, with lesser clans forming a loose confederacy that mostly involved the coordination of seasonal hunts and sharing of resources, not political dominance. (More on this in the psychology section).

Without any central governance, the ability of asari to work together to further their own civilization was blunted. Focused on consensus and cooperation within the clan, they did not link their efforts with other clans. Rather than build large cities and borders, asari preferred smaller, more diffuse settlement patterns. Matriarchs bound together large amounts of maidens and matrons through mental domination in ritualized mass sexual encounters. With the swapping and trading of genetic material something that could be controlled, in many instances the relationships between clans were based solely on sexual exchanges and which matriarch could dominate another.

The result was loosely organized chaos, with no one focusing on the advancement of the race or even their local group, and instead focusing on survival and positioning. While there was some limited warfare, it was usually in regards to hunting grounds and the limited amounts of space available for proper agriculture. Rather than identify by nations, or even by locale, asari identified by clan and bloodline and matriarchy.

Two, three, or even four clans might dwell in a region of several hundred square miles, with dozens of small agricultural villages mostly held by matrons raising their families, and hunting grounds dominated by maidens stalking prey. Trade was for meat and hides in exchanges for grains and, as civilization progressed, manufactured goods – weapons, tools, and the like. All of these exchanges were enhanced by a network of sexual relationships and mental bondings, often between up to thousands of asari in various lines of relationships. A hunter who bonded with a matron and delivered her meat would have her innermost thoughts shared with the other hunters who vied for the matrons favors, as well as other maidens, who might then bond with yet other matrons.

Sociologists have long sneered at the asari fixation on sex as some kind of deviancy, but asari are not humans and have very fine control over birthrates and needs. The lack of loyalty to concepts in favor of loyalty to a group, often poorly defined, meant that no leader could unify asari under anything larger than the city state. This point cannot be stressed enough, as the staggeringly long life spans of asari mean that this sort of social structuring occurred less than sixty asari generations ago. Sixty generations ago, humans had moved through several iterations of social structures (clans, tribes, city states, nations-states, empires, and ethnic national groups) and government types (autocracies, democracies, monarchies, republics, etc).

The asari, for being such an 'old' race with much longer recorded history than humans, are still 'young' in terms of social development. This has had ramifications in how their history has unfolded (see the government section.)

Another side effect of the tampering was, some ten to fifteen thousand years ago, the emergence of deviant asari with a flawed melding process and increased ability at mental domination. The results of this were the rise of very rare and powerful asari who could not meld to reproduce, but instead somehow absorbed the memories and eezo charge of the asari they bonded with. This action had several possible strengths, the weakest ravaging the neural system, the strongest burning it out. Additionally, the mental strength of these strange asari was much higher than other asari. They were capable of dominating other asari, through as yet unknown methods of subtle mass effect manipulation of the bio-neural fields of other lifeforms. In effect, they could put others at ease and force them to submit to the mistress's will.

The asari have been very careful in hiding the existence of these monsters, which they style ardat-yakshi, but their existence precipitated a crisis in asari history. For the first time, a single strong individual could amass enough power to face down multiple matriarchs. Several ardat-yakshi 'queens' arose, bidding their collective clans to fight one another for dominance.

By this time, asari records become more coherent, and no further influences of Athame can be seen. Some forty thousand years ago, the asari moved from a hunter culture to a communal one, under the pressure of the queens.

* * *

**Imperial Industrial Age: The War of Queens**

Most of the ardat-yakshi seemed to arise in the smaller, stubborn hunting clans of the forest near the mountains, where distance from other clans was high and none of the Thirty had arisen. Over the course of several hundred years, while the Thirty played political games and maneuvered with and around each other to slowly begin to control asari society, the ardat-yakshi battled for dominance. The weaker version of their kind was killed off, with only the strongest surviving, and two figures stand out in this historical context.

Queen Shatha was the strongest ardat-yakshi known, recorded multiple times in ancient records as being able to kill dozens of other asari with ease using biotics alone. All records of her indicate she was rapacious, cruel, delighting in sadism and dominance. She arose from uncertain circumstances in the fringes of the Skypillar mountains, among the mountain and forest clans. The disparate clans she brought together were on the verge of starvation, due to climate changes driving off the prey they depended upon and blights afflicting their crops. Never prosperous, the clans inability to even feed their young and their hatred and jealousy of the prosperous seacoast clans gave the ardat-yakshi a way to dominate them. Shatha lead these clans on a conquest of neighboring areas, driving a long cone of bloodshed all the way from the Skypillar Mountains to the Canthas Sea, bringing over two hundred and fifty clans under her domination.

Near the Sensha Sea, where none of the Thirty had arisen and the fishing was somewhat poor, the so-called Silent Queen arose to prominence. Legends and rumors surround this figure, who the stories claimed was so powerful she did not even need to speak, merely imparting her will directly on her followers. The Silent Queen was icy, cold, calculating, and meticulous. With an interest in mechanical devices and the sciences, she pushed her clan towards both military conquest as well as improving technology. It didn't take long for her to simply dominate the matriarchs of her clan, and from there control other clans. The Sensha Sea, an inland sea linked by a narrow natural canal to the ocean, was rich in seaweed but not fish, and the surrounding rocky flatlands were not suited for much agricultural, but were laden with ore and eezo deposits.

By this time, asari were operating at a level of knowledge roughly on part with Ancient Rome, but with clear understandings of biology and medicine and good working knowledge of astronomy. The asari hunted with various weapons, mostly light metallic spears hurled with biotics, slender metal rods imparted with biotic energy and weight, and a ranged device called the cerric that was akin to a cross between a slingshot and a crossbow. Clan warfare only broke out over hunting areas and occasionally breeding rights, and until the rise of the Queens was very rare

Shatha developed most of the concepts of the asari military that they still use today. The hunting pack, the scouting and quick strike, the use of biotics to wear down and demoralize enemies, and only then striking with overwhelming force – these were her strategies. She would send forth spies in the guise of battered refugees (often times mentally dominating actual refugees to do so, editing their memories) and spy out promising areas, clans with strong matriarchs, and natural resources such as iron, copper, and gold. The strike that followed would be overwhelming, focusing on crushing and killing matriarchs and gaining access to the areas where children were hidden.

In addition to her brutality, Shatha was a talented herbalist and healer. Ironic for someone of such a vicious disposition, but she is credited in multiple accounts for several advances in medicine and in agriculture. Her ability to bring together so many clans allowed, for the first time, the mass levels of agricultural development needed for dense populations. Since none of the Thirty were nearby, her achievements were all the more remarkable, and before long she had added nearly every one of the thousand clans that occupied the arboreal forest areas inland under her banner. Upon reaching the Canthas Sea, she built a magnificent capital, and assaulted the remaining clans in the area, who fled south to the protection of the Thirty.

The Silent Queen, on the other hand, focused on technology, and initiated the beginning of the industrial era. Her cohorts built metalled roadways, invested in (and mastered) both water and steam power, and in less than three hundred years, began producing primitive firearms and bombs. Their ability to use biotics to mitigate the weight of armor, based on the Silent Queen's research in to biotic abilities, allowed them to use heavy interlocking plates of metal to protect themselves. The Silent Queen conquered over a hundred clans, and used a complex method of favor and arbitration to organize hunting areas, breeding rights, water use, logging and more.

It is said that the Grand Temple of Athame was built by the Silent Queen, who was, according to legend, a priestess of the Goddess. What is known is that in less than two centuries, the asari of the coast had advanced from swords and bow-analogues

Between the two ardat-yakshi, nearly a third of the race fell under their domination. Shatha declared herself a goddess, promising a freedom from the restrictive, poor lives lead by the mountain and forest clans, using increasingly deranged and perverted sexual practices to form a cult of personality around her and her 'daughters', weaker ardat-yakshi who appealed to her for protection. The Silent Queen declared herself the Hand of Athame, calling the Thirty pretenders, and inciting the poorer clans of the far southern coasts towards war.

The Thirty were trapped between the two, and while their walled cities and larger wealth would serve them in the short term, they saw all too clearly that the ardat-yakshi would win in the long run, given time. The Thirty thus formed the Concordat of Armali, at the city of that name, binding the Thirty together as rulers of the Asari and promising to aid one another in times of war and famine.

The most powerful of the Thirty, Houses T'Armal and House T'Shora, lead the assault first against Shatha, the first large scale war in asari history. Sometime during the war, the Silent Queen lead her forces against the Thirty as well.

Much of the historical record of the so-called War of the Queens is lost, or mingled with legend and myth. What is known is that it was bloody and violent in the extreme, and the majority of the ardat-yakshi were slain in the conflict that raged for some six hundred years. The mountain and forest clans, with no real cities and dependent on numbers and biotic strength, were routed in short order, with the Matriarchs of the Thirty engaging Shatha in a battle recorded at length in the Justicar Memory-Oath chants. If this tale is to be believed, Shatha's biotic might was enough to destroy over two thousand asari before she was brought down by the combined might of over a hundred Matriarchs.

The war with the Silent Queen dragged on for centuries, as the Thirty slowly adapted and increased their own technology to match the level of their adversary. Many military historians puzzle over the Silent Queen's actions and activities, many of which make little sense, such as building faculties devoted to manufacturing or libraries of information in forward areas and allowing them to be captured by the Thirty. Every time the Silent Queen seemed to be defeated, she would bring forth new innovations.

There are some who believe the Silent Queen was acting to advance the asari race, believing that she could crush the Thirty who would do all the work of upgrading and improving the technology of the asari under their dominion. In a series of attacks, the Silent Queen crushed three armies of the Thirty and crushed the majority of the matriarchs of the Thirty. She drove over five hundred miles into the territory of the Thirty, slaughtering tens of thousands of asari who would not kneel, and managed to pin the largest armies of the Thirty into a trap that cost them almost a quarter of their forces.

In year 1 of the Asari Calendar, the remaining forces of the Thirty met on the plains of Miathra, the southernmost of the cities of the Thirty, against the full force of the Silent Queen's army. Historical records and artifacts indicate the Thirty's forces had developed primitive matchlock firearms, cannons, and begun the process of moving into molecular manipulation in biotics, moving beyond mere kinetic shifts. Their army numbered nearly half a million asari, the largest fighting force of huntresses and battle-priestesses assembled for many millennia, driven by desperation. If Miathra fell, the Silent Queen would have access to the largest dockyard and shipyard in the world, and an assault on Armali would soon follow.

The forces of the Silent Queen were less than half that, but they had repeating rifles, rotary barrel large caliber weapons, steam-augmented armored wagons that used what appears to be some sort of Greek Fire in a flamethrower-type arrangement, and over a hundred aerial balloons equipped with bags of naphtha.

The fighting was severe, the Silent Queen's armies breaking the lines of the Thirty with their more advanced weapons and inflicting devastating casualties. While the Thirty had the edge in numbers, their more primitive weapons were not a good match against the arms of the Silent Queen, and the ardat-yakshi's biotics were devastating, capable of crushing entire groups of asari under sheer kinetic force. Her barriers were so strong that she laughed at cannonballs and musket balls that rebounded from her slender form, and at a distance of two miles was able to crush the gates of Miathra with the wave of a hand.

It was the bravery of the Paladins of Athame, battle-priestess serving the Thirty, that broke through the Silent Queen's bodyguard just as the city was about to fall. The sixty or so warriors died nearly to the last asari, but they managed to injure the Silent Queen, using biotics the ardat-yakshi had never seen before and crippling her.

With her mental domination weakened, some of those she had controlled began to rebel, and fighting broke out in her own forces. Gambling everything, the forces of House T'Soni and House Vasir charged into the enemy, slaying many and, according to legend, shattering the guard of the Silent Queen and slaying her.

* * *

**The Age of Unity: the Peace of the Thirty**

With smashing of the Silent Queen and the death of most of the ardat-yakshi, peace descended over Thessia. The Thirty, shaken by the experience, began a process of outreach and moving their core habitations more widely across the planet. The Thirty were very quick and focused on applying the advanced technology of the Silent Queen as well as the improved agricultural methods of Shatha, incorporating these into their various exchanges with lesser clans. Many clans, on the fringes of asari exploration of their world, were able to advance from semi-primitivism towards civilized towns and modern medicine in a handful of years. This widespread gifting of technology and industry cemented the Thirty's control over asari society, and even today most asari view the Thirty with awe as saviors of the race.

Over the next thousand years, the Thirty spread themselves widely apart, rather than concentrating on the seacoast near Armali. The premier house of the Thirty, House T'Armal, abandoned it's ancestral home to the houses of T'Soni and Vasir, heroes of the War of Queens, moving deep inland towards the mountains. Other houses spread across the sea, or into the forests.

While this allowed the Thirty greater control over the areas they moved into, it also served to sever the tight bonds of the Thirty. Over the next five millennia, the cities became the centers of small city states. With no real need to go to war and the memories of the Queens firmly in their mind, conflict was avoided whenever possible.

The shift to attempting to understand each other rather than fight was improved by the rapid technological advancement that had occurred. But the natural conservative nature of the Thirty served to stifle innovation for many years, as they focused on spreading influence and control.

The asari had reached a level of technology roughly on par with early 20th century technology some six thousand years ago, and from there the pace of development slowed down drastically. Asari began the practice of siari as worship of Athame faded, focusing more on philosophical understanding, relationships and mastering their biotic abilities.

Periodic outbreaks of ardat-yakshi, and increasing amounts of crime and moral deviance, lead to the formation of the Justicar Order almost three thousand years ago, bound by oaths of subservience to the Thirty. Charged with the defense of the asari people, the Justicars acted as a vicious supra-natural police force that slew murderers, rapists, mind-dominators, ardat-yakshi, and anyone else that was a threat to the race. Refusing to become a political tool of the Thirty, the Justicars withdrew from society, giving up family ties and even children to focus on their duty.

Meanwhile, the city states of the Thirty had broadened, blooming into free-wheeling democracies dominated by not utterly controlled by the Thirty. While the Thirty owned well over half the race's wealth, they allowed the growth and prosperity of others, tying them to the fortunes of the Thirty through sex, bonding, trade agreements, and rumor. Society became stratified – at the top, the Thirty and their vassal clans, then the trading and warrior clans, then the merchant and agricultural clans, and at the bottom the so-called clanless, those common asari who's clans had melted away in the mixing of peoples after the War of Queens.

Such segregation was mostly limited to who one would have offspring with, but since offspring were the ultimate tie between clans, effectively the power of a clanless was limited to her lifetime, since it was unlikely she could parley her achievement beyond mere wealth to her children, and wealth was not the primary factor in affluence in asari culture. Indeed, while the Thirty were wealthy by dint of ancestral control of lands, mines and herds, much of the rest of the wealth was in the hands of the clanless, with the clans between beholden to the Thirty for social advancement but dependent on the good-will of the clanless for financial backing. This dance of position and control and submission fitted the asari personality perfectly and continues into the present day, not much changed.

Some four thousand years ago, increasing use of communication devices (electrical transmission devices, similar to telegraph but with a biotic component allowing stresses and emotions to be transmitted) began to link together various city states. The increasing unity of the asari people on a global level did not lead to further nation building – the change of the war now pushing consensus and accommodation as primary values meant there was little impetus to form larger principalities. Additionally, larger groupings would have required closer cooperation between the Thirty, who had by this time become warily antagonistic to one another.

* * *

**Age of Flight : The Stars beckon**

Thirty five hundred years ago, a massive asteroid broke away from the asteroid belts of Parnitha and smashed into the southern sea of Thessia, sending up tidal waves that smashed the city of Antai to ruins and slew most of the House Chansai. The devastation was horrific – six million asari lost their lives in tsunamis, millions more died from starvation in the famine that followed due to the darkening of the skies due to dust.

The Thirty began a heavy program of research and invention, creating over the next century a new clan structure out of whole cloth, that of the inventor clan. The inventors were given vast sums and broad goals by the Thirty – find methods to survive the asteroid strike, ensure it didn't happen again, and secure the safety of the race.

It took them some three hundred years to perfect flying machines, and another century to develop primitive spaceflight. As astronomers turned increasingly good telescopes to the skies, they realized to their horror that a rogue planet was traversing the system. It would circle back through the asteroid belt in but a few more centuries, and all calculations showed the results would be a wave of asteroid strikes likely to completely devastate the world.

Driven by desperation, the asari achieved rocket-assisted spaceflight around 600 AD on Earth. The Thirty financed a series of ships, exploring their solar system. They focused first on the barren, nearly airless world of Piares, mining it heavily for raw materials to build additional ships, then on Lucan, the super-massive asteroid in the belt that offered large amounts of bauxite and other industrial metals.

The force-march of the asari through such staggering technological changes ushered in significant cultural upheaval. Over time, avoiding inter-clan inbreeding, even with the ability to manipulate genes, became harder due to cultural limits and clan restrictions. Birthrates began to fall, and the number of asari with higher dispositions on the ardat-yakshi scale rose. With the lack of strong centralized leadership, matriarchs took even more power in society, but rarely retained family attachments at such an age, instead gathering groups of maidens to their side to spread their philosophies.

Families became strained, tense arrangements, with social standing, economic status and breeding quality all adding into clan politics and the constant swirl of social rumors and bond-enhanced sensitivity stirred in. Divorces became common and ugly, and increasingly, young maidens turned away from the pastoral life as hunters or priestesses, instead offering pleasure to lonely matrons, serving matriarchs, or falling to crime. The long-view asari viewpoint on these immature acts was amused tolerance, but some in asari society did not like the changes and called for a return to older, simpler values.

This was cracked down on by the Thirty as well as the inventor clans, now gaining influence due to the value of their skills. The space push increased, driving unemployment to almost zero percent, and the ecosystem of Thessia began to suffer as mining and industry took a toll on the planet. Increasing numbers of clans began to move from the hinterlands towards the cities, increasing the control the Thirty had over the population.

Unlike humanity, the asari appear to have no Prothean ruins of the sort we found on Mars, so we are unsure how they came to discover the mass relay in their system and how to utilize it. But they were able to do so, and began to explore space in hesitant jumps. With no centralized government, and no single family of the Thirty capable of funding a fleet of warships, the Thirty came together to form a loose confederacy of interlocking financial obligations and military cooperation known collectively as the Asari Republic.

The Republic had no ability to control the asari city-states, nor anything on Thessia itself, but had top priority in resource allocation, and was the central arbiter of funds moved towards space exploration. With this centralized repository, the pace of asari development and technology moved forward rapidly. It didn't take long for more powerful orbital satellites to pinpoint the path and trajectory of the rogue planet.

Fifteen years saw the construction of several large (roughly cruiser sized) ships, equipped with the first primitive mass accelerators the asari could produce. This fleet spent several months methodically bombarding the rogue planet before it shattered into varying large chunks, all of which hurled out of the path of Thessia – most being captured by the large gas giants in the system. Platforms with mass effect weapons and missile banks were also erected around Thessia, as were massive barrier shields to protect the cities from further asteroid impacts.

* * *

**The Age of Silence : The trek to the Citadel**

Asari exploration in the early years of their spaceflight era was cautious and hesitant. Asari colonized slowly, as Thessia was overpopulated but still the center of society. Clans who moved off planet were trivialized in terms of their relationships to the home world, although over time they came to dominate the planets to which they settled. New powerful clan groups and alliances sprung up on the handful of asari colonies, and suddenly the clanless realized true freedom from the wheeling social controls and tight constraints of Thessian society were available.

The colony wave moved more quickly after that, and Prothean ruins discovered by asari explorers further sped exploration along. The asari stumbled across the gory ruins of seven other sentient species, all slain by nuclear war or ecological disasters, and increased the weapons and size of their fleet-ships. Their cautious approach was given further reinforcement when asari researchers, plotting the links between the mass relays they had opened, discovered they were leading to a point near the outer rim of the galaxy core.

On a single fateful day, some five hundred years before the birth of Christ and the Rachni War, the Asari ship AEV Graceful Gaze discovered the Widow Nebula and the Citadel. The asari approached with trepidation, curiosity, and above all else caution, but the station was deserted save for the Keepers, the living maintenance drones that repaired and upgraded the Citadel.

The asari quickly realized that the Widow Relay connected no less than a dozen primary relays, each of which connected to dozens and dozens of secondary relays, and was a nexus of the entire relay system. They rapidly moved to dominate this space station, bringing in greenery and water to the central ring to simulate the environment on Thessia, and building on the five arms a variety of apartments, factories, warehouses and military facilities to secure their discovery.

They were in the midst of this effort when the salarian ships arrived at the Citadel, barely forty years after their own arrival. The meeting of the two races was a staggering, shaking event for both salarians and asari.

The lifespans of salarians was brief in a way that left the asari literally disbelieving, but their activity and intellect was equally swift. With a fifth of the history of the asari, salarian technology was significantly more advanced, refined, and flexible in many areas. But the asari had an edge in mass effect technology, and that, combined with their naturally mysterious aura, powerful biotics, and immense lifespans, gave the salarian dalatrasses pause.

Rather than take the chance fighting a clearly powerful foe, the salarians and asari decided to work together. And in many ways that partnership is the core of what Cerberus fears, for humanity and on a lesser scale for all races. Asari history had shaped these alien women into creatures completely incapable of understanding concepts such as liberty, privacy, or even dignity – a race who turned from violence to embrace a smothering level of almost incestuous self-reflection, an economy half based on social, sexual, and even cultural postures and cues and not on actual profit or merit, and a religion that quickly took up the concept that asari were destined to guide, lead, and dominate all other life in the galaxy.

* * *

**The Modern Age and the Change of Focus**

History after their capture of the Citadel is well known to all. They combined forces with the salarians and grew strong, strong enough that they could dictate terms to other species who arrived. The combination of asari political maneuvering and salarian intelligence gathering was unbeatable.

The quarians and batarians, each more wrapped up in their own cultural biases and loci, were easily manipulated to subservience. Turians were manipulated from the beginning, duped into overextending in the Krogan wars and then being reliant on asari and salarian financial aid to stabilize their culture. The hanar-drell compact was tolerated by the simple dint of being able to manipulate the hanar through the discovery and relinquishing of Prothean ruins after everything of use had been stripped. The volus, vorcha, and elcor were not even worthy of being considered for a place on the Council, and the only reason the turians were is due to the worrying size of their military.

Asari culture underwent another startling shift during this time period. A few asari had experimented with alien lovers – mostly quarians and salarians, but the occasional krogan. They believed, based on the results of their offspring, that mating with aliens produced superior results, and that they could manipulate the DNA of their offspring and match it to certain patterns in that of their mates to pass on traits that were desirable.

The Thirty investigated these claims and found that, at best, all that was passed on was various proto-racial memories, An asari with a krogan sire would be more prone to violence and strong emotion, but certainly had no real mental or physical differences.

However, such offspring were never found to be ardat-yakshi. With the problem of the ardat-yakshi growing with each year, the Thirty began to encourage breeding with aliens. Subtly, over several centuries, breeding with other asari for the purpose of offspring came closer and closer to outright taboo. At first, many asari embraced this craze. After years of byzantine mating and breeding rituals, the ability to simply pick a mate based on personality and desire was refreshing for many asari.

The asari ability to meld, to pick up surface emotions during a meld and memories during a bond, quickly became asari trump cards. Maidens were increasingly encouraged to mingle freely with aliens, and over time fell into further patterns of immature, impulsive behavior. Exotic dancing, prostitution, mercenary work and more all became the past-times of the young. The Thirty themselves took mates from other species with connections or vital information, and it was often joked among salarian intelligence services that an asari could achieve more with a smile and a night in bed than an entire spy unit.

As time progressed, and the number of ardat-yakshi dropped precipitously, the Thirty moved to ensure they did not arise again – as the only real threat to the power of the Thirty at this stage, they were seen as the primary danger. Worse, if aliens discovered the ardat-yakshi, the Thirty feared backlashes or reprisals, and a loss of trust. Thus, using all of their influence, control and manipulation, the Thirty steered asari society to the concept that asari having children with other asari was bad.

(An aside: of all the aliens, the asari are the most repulsive in their attitudes towards humanity, and their innate inability to trust and be truthful with other races is the core of this. The salarians are lying, shifty, and immoral, but they at least are not hiding the nature of who and what they are or what they want. The turians are hidebound, racist, and probably racially schizophrenic, but they do not betray or pervert the very nature of their enemies. Only the asari do. And only the asari see nothing wrong with doing so.)

This did not always work, however, and many asari, repulsed or at least not attracted to most aliens, refused to do such. While the quarians were extant, many asari found them attractive in an exotic fashion, and the females similar enough in some ways, but the Morning War sealed quarians into their suits and away from the gazes of asari maidens, who forgot them.

Increasingly, asari raised far from Thessia and the influence of the Thirty turned to their own kind for romance and comfort, and questioned the harsh social taboos against having children with their own species. Meanwhile, the efforts of the Thirty to reduce maidens from a potential army for troublemakers to very nearly a class of whores and mercenaries had succeeded in a generation of matrons who were very weary of such endeavors, returning home to raise families. The short lived races around them lived long enough to cause their asari mates great grief when they finally died, and as a result many asari did not even think about starting families or made any planning for such.

Humanity's arrival on the scene was another shock for the asari, who were the primary reason the First Contact War was stopped. With the exception of hair instead of crests and skin color, female humans might have well been asari, and male humans were different enough in just a minor way to be utterly exotic yet still close enough that asari natural species attraction affected them.

Asari went mad over the conflicting, rich cultures that humanity brought with them, and the energy and drive of humans was seen as something incredible to the asari. In the span of a few asari lifetimes, humans had driven themselves from fighting with sticks and rocks to gracing the corridors of the Citadel. To the Thirty, they seemed dangerous, but also an opportunity.

Currently, asari seem to favor humanity, although in a way that Cerberus finds disturbing at best. Asari matriarchs start biotic cults among our populations, and asari maidens seduce away men and women their service. The asari ability to enthrall their lovers, the addictive nature of bonding and melding, and the fact that asari are extremely attractive to humans, all combine to make them a lure few humans bother to resist.

And yet, any view of asari culture shows their fundamental nature is to adapt to changing circumstances and then bend them to their own purpose. The early asari, rather than use their nature to aid one another, bartered sex and advantage in a way that seems truly repulsive to us. Their inability to control their own kind, and the desire for matriarchs to rule, lead to scattered, weak clans. Even the Thirty, with all their vaunted wisdom, repeatedly made mistakes that ended up trivializing many asari who were not of importance to the Thirty, making them prime fodder for ardat-yakshi in the War of Queens.

Rather than rein in these impulses, they nearly let them destroy their entire culture, then rebuilt it using bribery and political manipulations. The Thirty care nothing for the clans, or even the asari race, only their own dominance. The clan structure isolates asari from one another, ensuring that only events that threaten the race as a whole can unify them, and even then, they are likely to hide behind an ally.


	5. Chapter 5 - Asari Psychology

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Asari psychology and social structure is baffling. I worked closely with the teams from Shadow in compiling this document, but be aware that understanding asari mindsets is akin to comprehending quantum physics – it is more of a matter of grasping principles than true understanding. Asari psychology is a mess of deviant sexuality, obsessions with social relationships, species-wide mind sharing, and an almost casual disregard for other races due to their long life spans via ours.

I'd also like to point out that Agent Cole's relationship with the asari called Sapphire is completely inappropriate.

* * *

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **To withdraw in disgust is neither apathy nor cowardice, but prudence. One cannot find pearls among swine.

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

ICARCUS-SIX-THREE-SEVEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

Dr. Minsta ,

Agent Cole has had an unfortunate accident, along with his asari lover. We appreciate your attention to detail in ensuring none of the agents we use in infiltration and data gathering is .. compromised by their duties, however pleasant they may be.

The Iron General

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **The rewards of tolerance of the alien are treachery and betrayal.

* * *

**Asari Psychology: **

If the basis of human psychology is the study of motivation, needs, and self-perception, then the best way to describe asari psychology – and how alien they are – is the study of relationships, desires, and posturing. Asari are not humans. This may seem like an obvious and silly thing to point out, but due to the near identical appearance of the asari to us, and their ability to comprehend and absorb information about races they have melded with, the point needs to be made, and made repeatedly.

Humans have a hierarchy of needs. While much of Maslow's work has come under question from deterministic researchers and sociopsychologists, the framework is sound enough to comprehend what drives humans – basic needs such as shelter, food, sex, followed by social needs such as family and acceptance, topped off by goals and self-actualization. Asari do not function anywhere close to this.

If one is to construct an asari 'hierarchy of needs', then the bottom layer could be termed hunter-like survivalist instinct. At the most primitive, asari are hunter-gatherers still, focused on individual achievement linked to furthering the clan. Thus, the basics are food and water, shelter, and clan identity and acceptance. Rogue asari who are rejected from their clans end up retaining this hunter-like mentality, rarely if ever rising above a sort of selfish and brutal outlook until they can establish their own clan structure, however flimsy it may be.

Above this tier is the powerful and overwhelming need for esteem, acceptance, and influence. Many researchers would put sex somewhere in these tiers, but for the asari, sexual contact is of astonishingly little importance or value. What matters is that a person is accepted, that they are part of the consensus, that they are trusted enough to be brought into bonds and melds and made part of the greater whole. There is no such concept in asari relations as fidelity in terms of sexual behavior, nor is there taboo about it – to the asari, casual sexuality is roughly on par with how humans view gossip.

After fulfilling needs of the body, clan, and being accepted, the third tier of asari behavior becomes something akin to human self-actualization. Asari who have achieved this stage begin to question the fundamental nature of who and what they are, and to work with others to build consensus, cooperation, and a tighter network of bonds and melds and the sharing of memories.

This urge is very deep seated, and is why the asari do not seem to have (with the exception of the ardat-yakshi) ever had any real intercene warfare, only minor skirmishes over hunting areas in their very early years. Conflict resolution is very high in the asari mindset, as is comprehension of what the other – the other being a rival clan, a personal foe, or an unknown entity – is thinking, feeling, and expecting.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Age**

As asari age, their mindset and outlook on life changes. This is due to a host of physiological changes, the vast perspective and wisdom that living well over a thousand years brings, and the cumulative experiences of hundreds of melds with other asari or aliens.

Maiden psychology is one of exploration, lack of responsibility, and enjoyment. With the exception of the Thirty (who are held to higher standards by their families and public perception), most asari maidens are raised within clan and family until they are around 80 years old, at which time they are let free to roam. Maidens are intensely sexualized as a result of both cultural upbringing and evolution, which forced clans to push maidens into matron stages as soon as possible to boost birthrates. Maidens are often involved in what humans would see as horrific trades for the equivalent of young teenagers – prostitutes, exotic dancers, escorts, mercenaries. Something like 95% of asari end up in one or more of these occupations for the first hundred or so years of life, before moving into something less dangerous, often in asari corporations where they make up low-level positions and begin learning actual trade skills.

Asari maidens, psychologically, are simply not mature adults. They are prone to wild emotional swings, vulnerable to flattery, and quite capable of fixating on certain goals to the exclusion of all else. For most asari maidens, these goals are to have fun and live wildly, but there are maidens who have fixations on making money, acquiring art, studying music, history or other pursuits, and who take up these concepts with almost frightening focus.

At some point, usually after two to three centuries of life, asari begin feeling urges to have offspring. In earlier times, maidens were pushed into this as quickly as possible, but in modern times most maidens are allowed to indulge themselves until they are ready to become mothers. It is worth noting that the idea of not having children is utterly and completely alien to asari. While maidens do not think about it very often, if at all, we have not been able to find even a single instance of asari who are childless past five hundred years of age, either in historical records or after interviews. The staggering birthrate of the asari, combined with the fact that literally every single one of them (with the obvious exception of ardat-yakshi) will have at least one child, explains why they outnumber humanity four to one and boast over a hundred well-settled colony worlds.

Even the most timid and frigid of asari is likely to have melded with a few dozen asari and/or aliens by the time she reaches the matron stage and begins feeling urges to begin a family. The shift to matron from maiden brings about strong conservatism and concealment of emotions, focusing on the partner or partners with which children are to be brought about. (See physiological studies for further information – but in brief, remember that asari pregnancies can end up with both partners pregnant with the others child, or even circular pregnancy arrangements among three or more asari. Truly revolting.)

Matrons foremost priority is raising their children, and on providing for their children's future. Matrons are hardworking, quiet, focused on their family and clan and do not take risks or chances. Matrons that undergo the bond with a mate tend to settle down into a single relationship for the life of the mate, which in all cases but krogans, is only a small span of time. Even with the most advanced medical care genetic improvements, and cybernetics, a human can't live much past 140, most turians can't live past 180, and salarians rarely break 40. As such, matrons can afford to lavish attention and care on their bondmate.

Matron psychology focuses mostly on basic needs and is about the only time where sexual rampancy is dimmed. While many matrons become active again after the death of their bondmates, most are more hesitant to get involved on such a tight, personal level with aliens, and they begin non-childbearing relationships with other asari. These are rarely monogamous events, often being clan or regional connections that number in the dozens, more for comfort and friendship (and pleasure) than any lasting emotional bonds of what we could recognize as romantic. Again, romance and sex are utterly divided in the asari mindset.

Matrons are rarely seen in combative positions, preferring to take up more mediating and life-affirming pursuits, even after their children are grown. Matrons rarely get pregnant more than during one period in their life – they may have one child, or several children in a row, but almost never do they have a child at, say, three hundred and another at six hundred. (More can be found in the physiological section, but asari pregnancy is extremely untaxing due to physiological adaptations – asari can have upwards of eight offspring in a handful of years with no ill effects, and little pain.)

Once a matron has raised her child, she focuses more on reaching out to other matrons, building a network of social supporters and either following the teachings and guidance of a matriarch, or beginning to plan her own advancement to that state, depending on her level of self-confidence and social status. This part of asari psychology is poorly understood, but some asari seem naturally inclined to lead, and other to submit.

At around seven hundred years of age, sometimes later, a matron undergoes a physiological and mental shift. Most of the details can be found in the physiological section of this document, but the mental and psychological changes are profound. They gain a measure of mental strength and confidence that is stunning, while undergoing a complete psychological shift.

A Matriarch is an ancient creature, one who has ties to dozens, possibly hundreds or even thousands of other asari through linking and bonding. The mind of the asari shifts to encompass these memories on a conscious rather than unconscious level, and testing has confirmed the raw intellectual capacity increases by a factor of three for most matriarchs. The entire hierarchy of needs of an asari up to this point – survival, esteem, influence, consensus – fades, replaced by a single-minded desire to influence and control others. Matriarchs seemingly live to guide and lead other asari, often aiding in raising children, determining cultural influences, leading companies and participating in political and social leadership positions.

Matriarchs literally require a level of submission from those they lead. It is theorized that the asari mindset becomes so warped by linking and bonding and the influx of other memories that the original personality of the asari, over time, simply becomes an amalgam of various other linked personalities. The original asari becomes a semi-gestalt of what she has absorbed, changing her from a person to virtual group of persons operating with one viewpoint.

While this sounds ridiculous to the average human, for asari it makes sense. Early evolution would have put great stress on asari clans, and matriarchs acted as both natural leaders and living recording devices, incorporating the gestalt knowledge and personality of the clan or family unit they lead. In the modern era, however, this has slowly become a matter where many matriarchs lead tiny cults of personality, biotic groups, or even religions.

Truly grasping the psychology of a being such as a matriarch is nearly impossible. They have so many connections and submissive followers that concerns such as survival and esteem, or even self-actualization, must appear ridiculous to the asari. Matriarchs define success in a holistic, group based view, such as the success of the asari people, of their corporations or religious groups, or on a fixed long-term goal of staggering complexity.

Many matrons simply do not really become matriarchs. They age and die at around eight hundred years old, content and fulfilled with the lives they have lead. This explains why the asari population is about 10% adolescents, 30% maidens, 40% matrons, and only 20% matriarchs.

* * *

**Asari Linking and Sexuality**

One cannot divorce the asari from their overly sexualized presentation and reputation. That is because asari have a viewpoint on sex alien to almost every other known species in Citadel space.

Batarians, turians, volus, and drell sexuality is almost identical to human sexuality – attractions between two people, be it physical, mental, hormonal or situational, leading to a relationship of a sexual nature combined with some level of romantic affection, and a formal bond relationship that leads to children and a longer-term relationship involving living together. Salarians do not present this due to their method of reproduction and rapidly shifting emotional states, and krogan cannot presently afford such things, although there is evidence they fell into this model before the genophage. The mating rituals of the hanar do not allow for such, and elcor have communal mating that, while incorporating several partners, still results in the same effect.

Asari do not link sex with romantic feelings, or even the desire for children, in any way, shape, or form. For them, it is merely an activity, with no more significance than humans going out for a beer together, or turians going shooting together. Asari promiscuity is beyond staggering, trending into the truly ludicrous, as the average asari may have hundreds of casual sex partners in the years of being a maiden, and even after having children may take on dozens of further casual sex partners.

Since the asari have complete control over when they choose to become pregnant, and since it's very difficult for maidens to have the level of biotic control necessary to be able to induce a pregnancy, this casualness is to be expected to some degree. Additionally, since the asari sex act is not penetrative, at least among asari, it is of little concern.

One cannot approach asari culture and psychology without looking at sex, which is related to their methods of communication – linking, bonding, and melding. At the lightest level, linking is the practice of hooking the asari's own nervous system to that of their sex partner. This enhances the pleasure of the act, heightening sensitivity and even drawing out and intensifying the sensations. There is some light emotional transfer in such an act as well, but no exchanges of memories. Linking is apparently practice

for bonding, where an asari pushes the link deeper, binding together two beings on a mental level.

This allows for some exchanges of memories, of emotions, and for the asari to have a very deep understanding of the person she's engaged in the bond with. As such it is hardly a casual act, but one of a more romantic or emotional level.

The highest level of asari link is the Meld, where an asari tries to unify herself fully with the person she is linking to. The Meld is not something done lightly, nor is it reversible. Two sentient beings literally become one for the purposes of sentience while it is ongoing, and after there exists a low level bio-electrical link between the two, which allows for long distance transfer of emotions of a strong nature.

(This has been confirmed, see paired asari enhanced interrogation series VII). Melding is also required when asari wish to have children, as they claim to be able to use the partner's DNA to enhance the offspring.

The end result is that almost all sexual encounters with asari end up with linking at the very least, usually bonding if repeated. In the days before spaceflight, asari clans would trade maidens and sexual aggressiveness was used to bind and link groups together, to show there was no hostility. As breeding complications arose, either from trying to avoid the creation of ardat-yakshi or incompatibilities between seacoast and mountain or forest clans, casual sex for the purpose of entertainment and lowering tensions went from commonplace to almost required.

As populations grew more dense, the amount of linking between asari, and bonds, resulted in a nearly communal memory with clans and clan groupings. Social status was closely linked with the influence and control a bond-mate had over her partner (more commonly, partners) and the secrets and understanding they had of those who those partners had bonded with. The Thirty were the absolute masters at this technique, targeting those asari with liaisons who had wide networks of link and bond-mates and wielding disproportionate influence as a result.

* * *

**Asari Outcasts: shorn from the clan**

For whatever reason (research suggests recessive ardat-yakshi traits), some asari simply integrate poorly with other asari. These asari tend to lead solitary, depressed lives, unable to fit into asari culture. They recoil from melds and links, suppress their emotional states, and tend towards extremes, either focusing on some form of criminality or some esoteric method of study.

These outcasts usually end up gravitating to pastimes that give them no way out from the lives they live. They avoid their own kind when possible, and have an easier time mingling with aliens, although they remain awkward there as well. Unlike most asari, outcasts tend to value loyalty and sexual fidelity immensely, often taking only one mate their entire lives.

Outcast psychology is more understandable to humans than standard asari psychology is. They are lonely, vulnerable people, unable for whatever reason to participate in the crazed social maneuvering of their own kind and seeking some form of replacement for the clan. This makes them some of the most valuable targets for Cerberus infiltration operations, as they become more bitter and hateful of their own kind over time, and may even turn on them.

A high number of outcasts are those who are considered 'purebloods', offspring from the union of two asari rather than an asari and an alien. As such, they end up more likely than not to also pursue unions with another asari, usually to be rebuffed, and to cling to whoever ends up accepting them in whatever manner. Outcast asari place acceptance over even survival, being willing to risk their lives in almost suicidal situations if only to prove they are worthy.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Aliens : turians**

Asari and turians have little in common at first glance. Turians are alien in chirality and shape, having few common features with asari, and their culture demands absolute loyalty among mates, places values on intangibles such as honor and tradition rather than virtues of the moment, and rejects more subtle political intrigue as weak.. As a result, the average asari finds the turians to be staid, rather boring and quite naive. Maidens find their aggression and valor attractive, but usually don't get involved with them due to their fixation on fidelity.

Turian and asari military methods clash, as the turians believe force answers all questions while asari see force as the stick used only when the carrot fails. Justice and law are also clashing ideals, with asari absolutism seen as repugnant to turian sensibilities, and the turian refusal to separate civilian from military assets seen as barbaric by asari. Turian art, music, and culture, all designed to enhance the glory of the Hierarchy and the ancestors, is seen as mind-crushingly boring by asari, while asari culture with it's rapidly shifting social links is seen as insane by the rank-obsessed meritocracy of the turians.

Asari are more than capable of manipulating the turian mindset, which is fixated on goals and patterns, the social demands of honor, and intense and truthful self-examination. While few of these concepts translate cleanly to the asari focus, asari find turians attractive due to the turian's natural acceptance of authority when demonstrate to be competent.

Asari outcasts, those who do not fit into traditional asari society, find turians fascinating, and literally every known asari outcast has taken up with turians as mates and business partners. This is understandable – an asari outcast, shorn of the comfort of clan and the race, needs someone utterly devoted to them and them alone. Turians mate for life and even the most disgraced turian would hesitate before ever betraying their mate.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Aliens : salarians**

The asari attitude towards salarians can be described as disinterested amusement and collaboration. The two species are opposites in every way. Salarians prize inventiveness and change, while asari cling to conservatism. Salarians live for short spans of time and refuse to dwell in the moment, focusing on what lies ahead, asari cling to every second of existence as valuable and live for centuries. Salarians devalue sex as only for procreation, and that dependent on biological breeding values and at the control of the dalatrasses, asari see sex as communication and vital to understanding, and base breeding values on compatibility and emotional context.

Yet both races have strong submissive streaks towards the elder females, and both prize the resolution of conflict through methods other than force. Asari rarely take salarian mates, as sexuality is simply not something many salarians care about. Yet it does happen, most often with maidens, since salarians place zero value on fidelity much like asari do.

Salarian 'values', such as they are, provide a delicious counterpoint to asari subtle manipulations, and the two races have a deep respect for how the other manages to infiltrate and coopt other races and enemies. The military and combat guidelines for both races are also very similar, as are asari and salarian concepts of justice and law.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Aliens : batarians**

Asari and batarians have never gotten along – the asari find the batarians to be repulsive, cruel, mindless and all to devoted to an utterly male viewpoint that they cannot understand. The batarian reliance on slaves, and their cavalier attitude towards crime, also repulses them.

Asari views on almost every cultural aspect clash with batarians. Asari are collectivist and strive for consensus, social submission, and understanding. Batarians prize individuality and posturing, care nothing for agreements, and don't want to understand others, feeling that other races are inferior. The batarian slaver's preference for the capture and rape of asari maidens is also a point of ugly contention between the two races.

Asari outcasts sometimes mingle with batarians, but even this is rare. On the whole, asari and batarians do not interact.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Aliens : hanar, volus, elcor, and drell **

Asari's relationship with these highly alien races is usually limited. Some adventurous (and deviant) asari seek out relationships with the hanar for the purposes of sexual partnerships, but for the most part, the asari simply don't deign to bother with what they consider their lessers.

The asari have carefully manipulated the drell and volus in certain situations, raising tensions in the relationships between volus and turians, or drell and hanar, but this appears to be the moves of individual matriarchs. On some level, psychologically speaking, races that simply don't stand out much are not of much interest to asari.

While investigations of how asari culture clashes with other alien cultures could be performed, the lack of interaction makes it of value only in the sense of morbid curiosity.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Aliens : vorcha**

Really? Hopefully, this isn't even worth researching, and the only results we had so far in interviews resulted in slapped faces.

It shouldn't need repeating, but the asari rarely bother with inferior races. A few have made efforts at raising child vorcha in hopes of altering their behavior, but this , again, appears to be the act of a few matriarchs, not the race.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Aliens : krogan**

****At the current time, no research has been completed. Anecdotal evidence implies that unions such as this are rare, and that the asari have written off the krogan as both dying and too stubborn to manipulate.

Krogan find some asari attractive in only that offspring are possible, even if said offspring are asari. Some asari have had krogan mates in the past, the lifespans of the two races being very long and thus conducive to long term relationships. This does not appear to be commonplace in modern times, however.

* * *

**Asari Psychology and Humans:**

The discovery of humanity was a large shock to the asari collective psyche, and even decades later it's effects are still being felt. Humans became, in short order, the asari race's collective obsession, with literally millions upon millions of asari taking human mates both male and female.

The bizarre asari psychology, their inability to link fidelity and emotional attachment to sex, and their disassociated, long-view way of looking at things has proven a barrier to them fully understanding human psychology in turn. However, asari clearly understand that their appearance, sexuality, mystery and biotic power makes them appealing and intriguing to humans, and have parlayed that into a series of advances into human society and industry that are worrying.

The attitude of most asari towards humans is equally confusing. Asari look down on all other races, seeing themselves unmatched in terms of knowledge, power, lifespan, wealth, achievement and destiny. Yet they also are hesitant around humans, fearful of the drive and energy of our race. Unlike salarians, who waste much of their energies in internal bickering or paranoid planning, humanity's focus on concrete goals meshes well with the asari focus on dominance.

Maidens are particularly enamored of humans, particularly those from Thessia. The unending push to mate with aliens and not their own kind has exhausted the well of xenophilia most asari feel, and humans (especially human females) are identical enough for natural urges and attractions to take over. The short lifespan and energy of humans is also attractive, and the primacy of sexual actions in human self-esteem and social standing gives the asari powerful tools to manipulate humans with.

Matrons find humans to be better parents than salarians and better matches than turians or krogan. Humans have, compared to other races, extremely strong protective instincts towards their children, and most, if satisfied emotionally and sexually, are unlikely to wander off. Matrons also find humans more stable than salarians, more flexible than turians, and less aggressive and hard to control than krogan mates.

Matriarchs seem equally fascinated with humanity as a whole, if not humans on the individual level. Many matriarchs have had considerable success in forming religious groups, biotic cults, and other organizations in human society, while others have gone on swathes of sexual conquests, practicing the tactics once used in their pre-history to influence and dominate key human government or business figures.

The inter-relation between humans and asari is complicated by the current cultural backlash in some asari circles towards asari-asari offspring. Humans are seen as alien enough to avoid that taboo, yet enough like asari to be fulfilling. As a rule, asari are faintly, if reliably, protective of humanity, albeit for their own purposes and manipulation.

* * *

**Asari Mental Diseases and Conditions:**

Despite their great mental strength, asari are not immune to psychological or mental breakdown. Younger asari are no more resilient than humans to mental breakdown. They resist torture poorly, especially if they have such torture inflicted on a link-mate at the same time, and while many can practice biotic arts to suppress nerve reactions, anti-biotic drugs can remove this impediment.

Matrons, and especially matriarchs, however, due to the long life experiences they have and the grounding effects of so many bonds and links, become increasingly resistant to mental trauma, shock, and psychosis. Even the most brutal torture or horrible events are born by matriarchs with little to no series mental stress, although they will certainly be emotionally affected. Torture to bond-mates, however, breaks them even more quickly than maidens, since there is appearance no defense against such close mind linkages.

Asari have a condition similar to schizophrenia, which is caused when maidens attempt to bond too deeply in their youth. This causes confusion of their core personality and can lead to madness in short order, which is why most asari shy away from such deep bonds in their youth. Asari can also suffer from depression, most often after the death of a bond-mate or exile from a clan.

Asari have the ability to 'force-bond' and suppress or eliminate memories in another, which is the prime tool by which asari mental health professionals use to combat depression. However, this method can fail in times of stress or when heavy bonding occurs again, with often devastating results to the mental health of the asari in question.

Finally, there is a form of cancer that afflicts some asari, which damages the portion of their brains that regulates emotional control. While eventually lethal, the early stages can be treated if caught, but the resulting irrationality remains. This does not incapacitate the asari in question – the leader of Eclipse, Jona Sederis, suffers from this ailment – but makes them difficult to predict or control, and can often result in criminal activities or worse.


	6. Chapter 6 - Asari Physiology

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Asari physiology is , to put it plainly, ridiculous. There is no goddamned way any reputable scientist can refute the fact that the asari are flat out genetically engineered. It's infuriating, not only because the asari deny it, but because of the fact that humanity has no real way to counter such awesome advances woven into the very genes of the asari.

It makes me wonder if it was actually mere chance that sent eezo-laced asteroids into the seas of Thessia , or if that also was by design?

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** To embrace the alien is to reject the human. To coexist is to become perverted. One does not embrace the viper, nor coexist with the plague.

* * *

**Asari basic physiology:**

As mentioned in the historical section, asari are mammalian creatures with many amphibian ancestral traits. It is perhaps easier to define what asari aren't than what they are, but for the purpose of the requested research, such definitions are probably superfluous.

Asari are fully humanoid, with a range of height and builds that is almost uniform. Unlike humans, almost all asari stand between 5'2 and 5'10 in height, and weigh around 130 pounds. No obese asari have ever been observed, nor particularly thin asari. Asari proportions are also alarmingly homogenous , with most asari having strongly defined muscular proportions.

Asari have two eyes connected , as in humans, directly to the brain, although with a far more limited range of eye coloration. They possess no ears, but have tymphanic membranes in roughly the same area, covered by sheathes of thin skin, that at in much the same fashion. The head structure is almost identical to humans – asari have 34 teeth, a muscular tongue, and a larynx – with the exception of the asari crest, cartilaginous 'tentacles' that are actually a covering for heat-venting from the cranium, tied into a subcutaneous network of capillaries. The crest is semi-flexible, and can be bent down and against the skull for hours at time when an asari needs to wear a helmet or other head covering.

The asari bodily structure is also very nearly identical to the human form. They have nearly the exact same jointing as humans (with the caveat that asari joints are built differently and, as noted later on, more flexible) and the same locomotive pace as humans. Asari hands have five fingers, and even fingernails indistinguishable from humans.

Minor differences of course, do exist. The asari are clearly not humans, from their skin tone, but there are minor differences even there. Asari skin coloration ranges from pale blue to dark purple, and is pebbled in nature, retaining a certain level of amphibian background. A series of capillary tubes in the skin leads to internal bladders set in the upper chest that act in a similar fashion to gills. Asari can not fully breathe underwater but can absorb some oxygen while submerged , allowing them to to spend a great deal of time underwater without noticeable fatigue. Asari lungs are strong, with a complicated hexagonal lining structure of air-absorbing hairs that is markedly more efficient than human lungs.

Asari have a single, three chambered heart (much like a terrestrial frog) and two glands that store oxygen for emergencies, enriching the blood when stressed or exhausted. The asari digestive system is almost identical to the human system, complete with stomach, small and large intestines, and rectum. (Again, the similarity is just flat out ridiculous, anyone claiming this is parallel evolution should be stripped of their degree). Asari have two liver-like organs that filter blood , while kidney analogues work on ingested materials. They have a lymphatic system similar to that of humans, although without nodes, and the asari pancreas is also similar to that of humans.

There, most similarities end.

The asari nervous system is staggeringly complex, no less than three different nervous networks, two running under the skin and a third wrapped around the bones, with neural nodes found in the neck, chest, hips, and arms. The asari brain is the size of humans but twice as dense, folded even more compactly and showing signs of clear alterations – there is almost no vestigial brain stem, unlike humans, and most of the mass is pure cerebrum.

Within the brain are structures that are poorly understood, but believed to be related to asari biotic strength. The brain runs hot, which is why the skull is vented , the crests on the head acting as a heat exchanger and allowing the skull to swell slightly as the asari ages. Nerve bundles from the brain split at the base of the neck and run down a split spinal column, heavily armored with bone and muscle, joining at the base of the spine into a secondary nerve cluster that aids in bodily control.

Asari blood is cyanohematic, similar to humans, but does not use iron in binding oxygen, bizarrely instead using bauxite as a binding agent, giving asari blood a deep purple coloration. The blood is fortified with an adapted form of platlet-stemcell hybrid, which reacts to wounds and injuries by forming clots and bruises and then initiating rapid cellular regeneration. While certainly not true regeneration as the krogan do it, it is nearly on par with that of terrestrial starfish. Minor bruises and wounds are healed in hours, and even lost limbs regrow in weeks.

The asari skeletal structure, again, shows clear signs of design, with heavily cushioned double-jointed pivot joints the standard. The asari skeleton is capable of taking severe physics shocks, such as from biotic attack, and the bones, while hollow, are several times stronger than that of a human. Asari musculature is more long-strand than human muscle, with a different pattern to the muscles (asari muscles work in triads rather than opposed pairs.)

Asari sexual organs are limited to a birth canal, several nerve sensitive erogenous zones, and a large organ that seems to serve in a fashion similar to that of a human ovary. The asari uterus is tiny and expands out during pregnancy, and asari muscles in the hips are designed for maximum give during pregnancy. Most importantly, the asari pelvis itself is jointed in the middle, meaning pregnancies rarely cause asari much pain.

* * *

**Asari senses**

Asari have the five basic senses humans do. Asari eyesight is no better or worse than human baseline, nor is their sense of smell. Asari taste is slightly more sensitive, while asari hearing is somewhat worse, as asari do not have the cupping effects of the human ear. Asari are clearly still adapted for underwater activity, as the ear-analogue is sealed behind small muscular shields that open or close depending on moisture.

Asari have three senses humans do not. Like sharks, they can sense electrical currents in water, and can detect them through air at a much lesser range. As a result, it is very difficult to sneak up on asari without being grounded. Asari have an innate ability to sense bio-electrical fields when melded or linked to partners, and can apparently manipulate these during sexual acts to induce pleasure. Asari can also , in some cases, pick up on powerful biotic fields, even at great distances.

* * *

**Asari biotics**

As Thessia is fairly drowning in eezo (about 1 part per million in atmosphere, with concentrations as high as 1 part per 500,000 in the oceans) , the powerful natural biotic abilities of the asari should surprise no one. Unlike humans, which require pre-natal eezo exposure to develop biotics, and which end up coopting both the nervous and lymphatic system, asari are evolved into internalize, distribute, and even store eezo. A series of semi-permeable membranes in the area behind the jaw and in the lower back hold a slurry of protein, glucatonic suspensions, and eezo, circulated throughout the body in a secondary distribution system closely following the main arteries. Circulation is achieved through involuntary muscle contractions , and this eezo system is interlaced directly with both the asari's multitwined nervous system and a portion of the brain that acts much like an electric eels electrogenesis organs. This allows the asari nervous system to carry far higher voltages and charges than any other race, and provides a weak bio-electrical mass field by itself in combination with the body's natural eezo.

As a result, asari are fully capable of using powerful biotic attacks without any form of neural amplifier. Most wear a neural amp, against the skin, not surgical like that of humans, but this is mostly convenience and for focus and discrimination, not raw power.

Asari absorb eezo and are able to sustain electrical charge at varying rates. The Thirty (and their subsidiary descendant clans) have even stronger biotics than the average asari, due to the electrical node organ being larger and the nervous system more intertwined with it.

Nullifying asari biotics is not hard, compared with some other races. Pulse disruptor fields break up their innate bio-electrical field, and phase dissipation devices make it impossible for them to form a real mass effect field. Cerberus has developed a class of injection-action piezoelectric-inhibitor prion chains that can disable biotics permanently in an asari with sufficient concentrations, but is harmless in humans.

* * *

**Asari reproduction**

The asari reproductive cycle is based on the fact that asari are not asexual but mono-gender. In every other species we've encountered, there are two (or three in the case of the hanar) genders, and offspring are produced by the direct combination of two DNA segments , one from the father and one from the mother.

The asari clearly evolved from amphibian egg layers capable of self-fertilization. Somewhere in the evolution of animals on Thessia, either fate or a scientist of dubious sanity decided the process needed a complete derangement.

Asari become fertile when their nervous system is developed enough to handle nervous electrical energy from another being alongside their own. This usually does not happen until around the time most asari become matrons. Pregnancy before that point is very risky to the asari.

When the nervous system is prepared, asari sex is completely non-penetrative, and no actual transfer of DNA strands occurs. Rather than totally unfertilized eggs that are infused with a mate's DNA and hydrolyzed against further intrusion, asari eggs exist in a state of meosistatic incompleteness. The mother provides two complete sets of DNA to the egg, but only one is fully that of the mother, the other is a blank template, bracketed by protein 'frameworks' to prevent illegal or lethal DNA productions.

The cycle is closer to zygotic than gametic – this unfertilized egg is actually ( from the viewpoint of meiosis) 'fertilized' – but until and unless the asari generates certain hormones, no actual cell division occurs.

When engaged with a sexual partner, the asari is stimulated with direct skin contact to a series of folds in the skin in the lower back. These folds, sealed until the asari is aroused, cover sensitive nerve tissues and a direct connection to the secondary asari nervous system, with nerve bundles leading directly from this area (called the midnight) towards the egg organ.

When bonded fully with a partner, the asari draws upon the partner's bio-electrical nervous energy through the folds. The direct linking of these fields is needed to reach an energy state in the nervous system that triggers certain protein restrictors to release, and certain hormones to trigger.

Asari can consciously make certain alterations to the DNA of the blank genetic set in the egg during this process. These alterations fall into three main categories. By focusing pure electrical energy into the egg organ, asari build a higher baseline of DNA instructions from their own current genetic makeup. This means the asari child in question will be more like her mother in terms of physical attributes. Due to the bizarre nature of the process however, some of these alterations appear to also include improvements after the birth of the mother. A slender asari who works out and becomes very muscular tends , at well over 95% of the time, to give birth to strongly muscular children. Asari who become highly educated have asari children that demonstrate nearly photographic memory. It does not cover all aspects – strength, dexterity, raw intellect , biotic strength and memory capacity seem to cover it – but it means that every generation of asari is a bit stronger and faster and smarter than the last generation.

The second category of alteration deals with biotic strength. The asari mother can seemingly (again , 90% tendency, too high to be mere chance) 'channel' some of her own biotic potential into her child. This is done primarily as the child develops in utero, through commingling the eezo-laced protein slurry in their secondary circulation system through the placental membrane, but it certainly appears that the stronger the asari is in biotics, the stronger her child will be in biotic strength as well. A child of two young matrons is no where near the raw potential of a child of two matriarchs, for example. It is worth noting that the Thirty, unlike all other asari, usually wait until they are matriarchs before having children.

Finally, the asari believe (with little actual empirical evidence) that during this process they can make alterations to the child's DNA that brings in the attributes of the 'father' – be that another asari or an alien. We know that the process binds certain traits into the DNA and then randomizes the rest until the DNA strand fits within the protein framework, but we can't find any evidence that alien neural impulses could convey DNA information the way asari nervous impulses could. There seems to be a tendency for some (not all) asari children of alien parents to demonstrate some behavioral tendencies of their sire, but how much of this is due to the influence of the parent on the child's personality as it grows is uncertain.

Once fertilized fully, the development of the child occurs much as in human women. The asari uterus expands during pregnancy – asari do not have egg cycles or menstrual cycles, only building up a uteral lining when actually pregnant. This lining becomes a placental analogue, complete with a umbilical cord, fairly early on.

is hardly different than that for humans, except that asari have a much easier time of actual childbirth than humans do. The asari birth canal is larger than that of a human woman, and the asari pelvis is hinged in the middle with cartilaginous 'spars' linking the two halves. Additionally, during childbirth, certain organs pump out a constant stream of natural painkillers and muscle relaxants, and the entire process is aided by natural biotic effects.

Asari pregnancy runs for 11 months, and childbirth usually takes less than an hour, with little or no pain and no stretching or tearing noted. (As an aside, the Shadow Team's method for testing asari childbirth was brutal even to me – I expected them to steal or procure birth records from asari hospitals, not kidnap a dozen pregnant asari and see how the pregnancies occurred. It works, but it's unpleasant to watch small babies being killed. Please reign your lunatics in).

* * *

**Asari life cycle**

Asari infancy lasts about as long as human infancy does. Given their long, long lifespan, some expected asari to mature more slowly than humans, but they do not in any long term way. An asari child of 8 and a human child of 8 look much the same.

Growth (and maturity) slows at around 16, with the asari only slowly reaching full physical maturity at around 25. The primary difference is that asari at 25 are not adults, or even close to adults. They can best be described as teenagers.

From 25 to roughly 125 years old is the stage at which most asari consider being an 'early maiden'. After 125 years, maidens begin to slow their frenetic activities, and over the next 70 to 100 years hormonal changes begin to alter their bodies again. Most asari enter the matron states near 200 to 250 years of age, and maintain that until they grow much older.

At around 700, asari begin shifting into matriarchs. As indicated elsewhere, the process is not usually successful. Most are called matriarchs once they reach 800, but the vast majority of these die off soon thereafter. The move from matron to matriarch consumes a great deal of biotic energy and erodes the telomerase caps of the DNA of the asari in question, and if they are not thick enough for the body to rebuild, then the asari ages and dies of natural causes.

* * *

**Asari life span**

The oldest known asari , Matriarch Sihana, lived to the age of one thousand six hundred and fifty four. However, most asari that make the translation from matron to matriarch either die soon thereafter from systemic shock, or life to roughly twelve hundred years old.

Lifespan appears to be determined by the transitions from the stages of life. Asari who are forced into matronhood early tend to experience a harder time transitioning to matriarch, but truly, while many asari live long enough to become matriarchs, the abrupt physiological changes are hard to survive for any asari. Natural death (cascading cell necrosis) is caused by the exhaustion of the telomeric caps on DNA strands. This substance (telomerase) is consumed in large amounts during the shift to matriarch, and it's believed that exhaustion of this (which prevents normal cell division) is the primary cause of natural death.

There are other factors – nutrition, mental health, etc – but the sheer weight of numbers of the asari means that many make it through to matriarch status and closer to the end of life. As a result of the regenerative aging process, there is almost no difference between asari who are 200 and 1200, either physically or by mental degeneration such as dementia.

However, as asari age, the nervous system becomes more and more eezo infused and some nerve degenerative disorders can appear very late in life for asari that work heavily in the oceans of Thessia or in other high-eezo environments.

* * *

**Asari and Modifications **

As a rule, asari do not need and try to avoid cybernetic enhancement. Their natural regenerative abilities, while quite slow, make long-term cybernetic enhancement almost impossible without strong anti-rejection drugs and tailored therapy.

Asari also eschew cosmetic augmentations offered through genetic therapy, as they feel this pollutes the purity of the asari race.

Asari have no problems with biological modifications, and since the advent of alien contact, one such modification is pretty much universal, conducted at the birth of a child. One or several cloned strips of nerve-sensitive material is harvested from the azure and the midnight and surgically implanted in the asari birth canal. This allows asari to enjoy penetrative sex more fully – without this alteration, it would be merely faintly erotic. (Some more … adventurous maidens later in life go on to have such material grown and implanted in other areas. Disgusting whore creatures.)

Asari are also fond of biological modifications to enhance physical or biotic strength, such as lacing their bones with metals and implanting field boosters inside the marrow of their bones to increase their mass effect field power.

The wide array of human cosmetic surgical modifications (particularly breast enhancement and plastic surgery combined with nano-repressive 'reprogrammer' bots to make sure such things don't just regenerate away) has fascinated the asari since they discovered humanity.

* * *

**Asari and disease**

Asari have incredibly robust immune systems, with three different T-cell analogues, a natural ability to produce antibodies using protein coat fragments from the slightest infection, and a fever reaction that tends to kill all cells in infected wounds and force regenerate them. This , combined with tailored viral therapies to breed hunter-killer controlled monokyetic cancer analogues in nodes in the body, as well as the advanced state of asari medicine, means asari very rarely get sick.

Asari nasal structures are hooked into the crest's ventilation system, which has a series of passages that are lined with hairs and cleared through ejection through the crest, and asari mucous membranes are tied closely into the immune system, so they are somewhat resistant to airborne pathogens.

Asari are no less vulnerable to a few STD's than humans or turians. Syphilis , in particular, has managed to make a jump from human to asari DNA in less than twenty years. AIDS and other retroviruses are incapable of disabling the asari multi-T-cell structure and are not a threat, and most other opportunistic infections can be fought off.

* * *

**Asari and bodily disorders**

Aside from disease, asari suffer from cancers, although they are rare since the large caps of telomerase at the ends of each cell's DNA strand and the templated 'patch patterns' found in some bodily repair mechanisms can often derail cancers before they can even get established.

The asari heart is markedly inferior to the four-chambered human heart and undergoes a great deal of regeneration through the asari's lifetime. Heart attacks are common both in youth (due to stress and inadequate rest) and old age, although asari have proteins in the blood that prevent most cholesterol and oil plaques from causing arterial blockage.

Asari suffer high blood pressure, liver failure, and a variation of acid-reflux disorders much like humans. Asari skin is resistant to parasitic infections, and both the basal layer of skin cells as well as asari nail beds are hooked directly into gliotic concentrations of the immune system, so skin and nail disorders are rare.

Asari crests can become stiff and less heat-dissipating over time, which can lead to dementia and loss of memory or even death.


	7. Chapter 7 - Asari Culture I : structure

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

It is with sadness that I have to report Dr. Uraj was killed in his duties of gathering information for this document. Shadow Cell and Iron Cell operatives neutralized at least one of Night-Wind assassin bitches that killed, him, but not before they were able to free several captives, and escape. Without the force to pursue, we have since relocated from Panji to Illum, although we have not managed to obtain enough operating space to allow Iron Cell reinforcements to arrive.

The move to Illum is perhaps useful, as it is a study of the rapacious and incestuous nature of asari culture in a microcosm. Our research thus far has garnered some significant side benefits, and I'm sure our researches here will be no less fruitful.

Asari culture is inseparable from the asari clan system, both of which are throwbacks to the asari prehistoric period. For humans a gulf of fifty thousand years is beyond comprehension – something on the order of twenty-five hundred generations. The span of all of human history would, in the measure of asari, be akin to the difference between the modern day and the late 20th century. When lifespans are measured in centuries, a great deal of very old ways of interacting becomes apparent in asari culture.

This is probably why , despite leading the galaxy in technological prowess, economy, and influence, the asari are so terrified of humanity. We are free of the chains of social stigmas, of the stupid jockeying for position of the salarians or the mindless adoration of the past of the turians. In the span of a few asari generations we have come further and faster than any other species they know of, and while they desire to subjugate us and place us as their slaves at their feet, their disgusting mindset means they think we wish the same.

We , thanks to your guidance, do not.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** Reason begets doubt. Doubt begets mercy, mercy begets hesitation, hesitation begets a damned alien bullet through your head. Reason with your rifle, never with your mouth, when you face the alien.

* * *

**Asari Cultural Basics**

Human cultures are defined by four things – locale, language, ethnic groups, and customs. The difference between a young black male raised in the San Angelos Arcology group is utterly alien to a Hindu woman raised in the Calcutta Arcology. They think in different languages, with different foci. Their homelands are different, and the history therein. While humanity has moved beyond thinking there is any statistically important difference in race, we acknowledge that they have an effect on mindsets and the customs embraced by each ethnic group.

But the beauty of human society is that we are individuals and prize individuality even while being strongly drawn to our cultural backgrounds. We do not embrace the wonder of a home-cooked meal , or cry at the old national anthems , or smile helplessly at the laughter of a child merely because others do, but because it speaks to us as humans, as people. There is no independent nation of France, nor a French Foreign Legion any longer, yet soldiers still cry at the yearly parades at Cambrone. There is no longer a Swahili nation, yet millions each year still take up the language and the practices of that culture. One cannot find the empire of Rome on a map, or Carthage, but thousands of years after they died, do you not thrill at the name of Hannibal, or Caesar? The loss of Jerusalem has not destroyed the Jewish faith, and no matter how advanced humanity may get, baseball is still here, the sonatas of Mozart are still here, the beauty of zen poetry remains.

Put all of this out of your mind when dealing with asari, for they feel and embrace nothing of it.

Asari culture is enshrined and upheld by a single, overriding, overwhelming concept – that all must be one. Siari, the asari religion, states this no less strongly than the old Athame religious concepts did. Every trait of their biology, from their increasingly homogenous appearance to their linking of memories and emotions in sex forces this. Every aspect of their history has shown when one rises above others without the support of all the entire race suffers. Their psychology cannot even embrace the idea of the lone ruler without the understanding that a ruler without subjects and allies and partners is alone.

Asari culture is based on the blending of ideas, on the consensus of culture, on the de-emphasis of the differences and the comfort of the identical. Unlike humanity, asari identify as asari first, then by clan, then by citystate, then by family, and finally by self. Asari art is the expression of many artists, it's music designed to bring about the state of mind that all are as one, it's cultural norms and even myths reinforcing that, over and over.

A human is his own or her own unit, but before everything else is family, then ethnic culture, then nation. A human only embraces 'humanity' as an intellectual concept when every other aspect of life lines up with it. There very simply is no such thing as an asari traitor to the race.

Asari culture is not rich in the way of human culture. There is only one language, although it has evolved over time, because these beings who share innermost emotions and thoughts in their casual sex do so with the frequency you or I might engage in gossip over morning coffee. An asari sees their 'nation' as nothing less than all other asari, and it comes before all other considerations – before family, before personal desires, before city-state and certainly before any alien.

The asari see neither value nor beauty in diversity among themselves, although they prize it and cherish it in those around them. They see the myriad cultures of other races as interesting, finding different viewpoints and opportunities to manipulate and hold. They appreciate it in the same way a pimp might appreciate the beauty of his prostitutes, or the banker the gleam of his gold. It is beauty in that it represents that which they seek to profit from and control, not out of any aesthetic tastes.

* * *

**Asari Social Structures**

Asari culture, for all it's unity, is also highly stratified. This stratification is based neither on merit nor solely on bloodline, but rather on the ability to manipulate, convince, cajole or unify, which should surprise no one.

Atop this structure are the Thirty, the powerful clans that claim descent from Athame herself. The Thirty themselves are divided into ranks, with High Houses, Greater Houses, and Guardian Houses forming those ranks. Below the Houses Proper are the Lesser Houses, related cousin clans that provide additional members and allies.

Below that are the extant Asari Clans, which are picky about their membership and the activities undertaken by them. The Clans each oversee certain aspects of asari business, culture, or governance, but most take their guidance from the Thirty, either directly at the hands of the Republic, or indirectly via influence and manipulation.

Below the Clans , acting as the common people are the clanless, who form the bulk of the asari population.

Social standing is fluid , both upwards and downwards, and has no real absolutes. A commoner clanless can, with hard work and talent, find membership in one of the Clans. The clans can provide contact and influence with the Lesser Houses, and a Clan member of sufficient skill, talent and above all else poise and the ability to manipulate can be inducted into their ranks via bonding. The offspring of such a union are considered fully a part of the House, and with time can impress the members of a Full House enough to be inducted into their ranks. Indeed, Matriarch Lidanya T'Armal, one of the most powerful matriarchs in asari space, began life as a clanless orphan on the streets of Serrice, and now stands at the right hand of the most powerful and noble house in all of Thessia.

This freedom of social status , however, is hardly achieved by the average asari, who usually sublimate personal ambitions for group aims. An asari too focused on her own achievements is seen as gauche at best, and dangerous at worst, by her associates , and finds herself locked out of the asari network of commingling that provides them with so much of their cultural unity.

* * *

**Asari Clans**

In ancestral times, all asari were organized into clans, the most basic social grouping that asari have devised. The nuclear family – mother, father, children – is something utterly alien in many ways to asari until recent times, and only then is it found mostly in those asari who have , by dint of being cut off from other asari by work or location, been forced to assimilate more heavily with aliens.

Asari clans were the real grouping and remain that way. Clans are usually formed of anywhere from four to ten matriarchs, who will each have between two and as many as eight offspring each. These matrons will be equally fertile and press for as many possible offspring as they can. Once the original matriarchs die and the matrons ascend, the clan grows, until such time that either internal strife causes some matriarchs to leave to form a new clan or the clan becomes a formal bloodline.

Asari in pre-historical times would intermingle extremely heavily. An asari matron would have an offspring with one 'father', then turn around and impregnate the 'father'. Her own offspring might then sleep with said father, or with other clan mates. Given the high amount of control over DNA anomalies their physiology and mating methods allows, 'inbreeding' was not a clearly taboo concept.

However, such close concentrations of genetic traits were not desired, and as such usually clans would try to intermix and intermingle from the separate matriarch lines as heavily as possible. By four or five generations of breeding later, literally everyone in the clan would be distantly related to others. As this point a clan would begin making matches with other nearby clans. Eventually , even religion played a part in this, with their mythical god Janis taking a portfolio embracing law, travel and sex, as clan negotiations became so byzantine that courts of adjudication became necessary, and swaps might include journeys of many months between dozens of neighboring clans.

These matches would be for supplies, hunting areas, or for desirable mates. As society evolved, they became more a matter of the quality and depth of bloodlines involved in each clan. In modern times, most such clan interchanges are to boost the clan's genetic diversity, and to push for traits the clan desires. A clan of strongly biotic asari might mingle with a clan known for the agility of it's members, or with a wealthy clan for positions in their corporation. Some asari clans even barter themselves on public exchanges! (Truly, there is no end to the foulness of these alien women.)

Clan structure is fluid, and based on social maneuvering and perceptions of both sensuality and control. Many asari relationships are dominant/submissive in nature, with one asari being in charge and one submitting. As such, usually the clan is controlled by two or three dominant matriarchs, who lay out the course of the clan's activities and goals.

Clans that reach a sufficient size and stability, that can last for more than a handful of generations, become more permanent fixtures. These trace their ancestry back to a powerful figure or figures, usually powerful matriarchs, and this is called a Bloodline. Clans mingle bloodlines to form a nexus of possible traits in offspring, which is connected to the prestige and influence of the bloodline as a whole.

In the modern era, the clans also have varying dedicate focus areas. These include (listed roughly in order of importance to asari society, from highest to lowest):

_the Moondance Clans_: the most ancient clan structure, the Moondance clans are the ancient religious clans that once worshiped Athame and now focus on the practice of siari. They are philosophers, mediators, diplomats and priestesses rolled into one. Moondance clans oversee rituals of bonding and burial, the creation of new clans and Houses, and work with the Hearthwatch clans in mediating interclan discussions as well as reaching out to aliens. They are also what passes as an informal civil court, with powers by law to mediate disputes between asari and handle minor transgressions. While their numbers are small – there are only sixteen clans in this group, numbering barely a half-million asari – their influence on society and the Thirty is massive.

_The Clan of the Justicars_ – This is not really a 'clan' for the purposes of sex and relationship so much as for social structure and comraderie. The Justicar Clan contains the members of the Order of Justicars, the terrifying elite police that enforce the ban upon the Ardat-yakshi and ensure asari society is well served by it's leaders and clans. Justicars have absolute , utter authority on any asari world – the least of them could execute every matriarch of House T'Armal with not a whisper of protest – and even on asari-dominated worlds with aliens, such as Illum and Cyone, their power is not to be underestimated or gainsaid. There are less than a thousand of these elite asari warriors, but the clan also includes biotic instructors, support personnel, builders – anyone who supports the order severs all other clan and family ties to focus solely on the Order and it's code. All told, the clan numbers well under ten thousand souls, and joining it even in the most peripheral fashion is considered one of the highest honors in asari society. (Strangely, these justicars are about the only trustworthy asari around, as they eschew the asari mindset in favor of a cold-blooded, implacable destruction of anything and everything that violates their code. Almost admirable.)

_the Hearthwatch clans_ : The Heathwatch clans were originally a series of settlers on the dangerous plains between the coastal clans and the Thirty, and the mountain and forest clans. They often acted as the only conduit for trade, news, and diplomacy between the two. In the modern era, they continue this – they are lawyers, mediators, news reporters, investigators, and they make up the bulk of the judiciary, the police, and travel agencies. The Hearthwatch clans , above all other asari, prize racial unity and clan cooperation, and they are also the most in-tune with the constant social linkages and shading of memory and emotions that occurs between the various relationships that link the clans. With their ear to the pulse of all of asari society, the Hearthwatch are the most critical component of the asari mindset of racial unity. They are numerous, boasting over four hundred clans and over a hundred million members.

_the Lifeshaper Clans_ : In the ancient times, the Lifeshapers were the crude version of farmer-scientists, struggling to bring forth crops, tending to fishing areas, and ensuring the forests were not overcut. In the modern era, these clans run the large agricultural communes on Thessia and other life-giving worlds, as well as most of the hospitals, biological research centers, doctors and other medical facilities. They are additionally responsible for the schools and colleges, the local libraries, and the maintenance of the Asari e-democracy network of voting and information networks. They ensure there are no famines, and regularly inspect food and water for impurities, fight disease outbreaks, and work to improve asari birthrates (as if the bitches don't breed fast enough). There are roughly one hundred and forty such clans throughout asari space, totaling around fifty million members.

_the Skywatch Clans_ : The Skywatch Clans are the old inventor clans, updated for the modern era. They work closely with the Steelshape and Lifeshaper clans, but their focus is on science , research, and exploration. Skywatch clans make up the researchers in colleges, scientists and astronomers, as well as scouts and explorers. The Skywatch clans also spearhead and produce ship designs for the asari fleets , and are the caretakers of asari knowledge of the Protheans and other ancient lore. The Skywatch are not numerous in clan strength – there are only ten such clans – but each clan is staggeringly huge in size, with over fifty million asari among the ten.

_the Steelshape Clans_ : the first of the 'newer' industrial clans to arise, the Steelshape Clans focus on industrial work, construction, and infrastructure, as well as building and supporting colonies. They are more businesslike than all the other clans, parlaying their Clans' duties into profit and influence, but are also very traditional and spiritual, attempting to infuse siari and grace into everything the asari build, fly, or create. They are also very specialized, with many clans only doing one or two kinds of work – one clan may only do interior decoration, another only automotive work, etc. That explains why there are a staggering six thousand Steelshape clans, but their numbers are barely 300 million.

_The Shoreside and Skyside Clans_ : The Shoreside and Skyside Clans are what remained of the ancient hunting, fishing, and gathering clans after the clans began to fall apart in modern times. Traditionalist to the core, they refuse to assimlate into the more modern societal functions, and thus cling to very ancient jobs , albeit ones updated for the modern era. Mining , cooking (including most restaurants), fishing, hunting , eezo gathering, and not least of all bodyguard duties are what this clan focuses it's efforts on. The Eclipse mercenary group is the most successful (and independent) of the many mercenary companies that are part of the Shoreside and Skyside Clans. These clans also act as domestic servants, often fill posts in the asari military, and undertake aspects of asari culture that no one else wants – the maintenance of graveyards, handing and caring for the insane, and the like. They are neither numerous nor powerful, barely twenty such clans remaining, numbering only a few hundred thousand, but their numbers have rapidly grown in the past twenty years as more and more asari become disenchanted with modern life and seek older, simpler times.

Two other clan structures exist – the Thirty Families, and the clanless.

* * *

**The Thirty – princesses and queens of Thessia **

The Thirty Families are the clans originally designed by Athame to rule the Asari, according to history, lore, and myth. Certainly there is considerable historical and paleoarcheological evidence to back their claims. The Thirty breed only within their clan and their affiliated descendant lesser houses, with no known exceptions until the advent of alien contact, and since then, even given the taboo nature of asari-asari breeding leading to ardat-yakshi and the imprimatur to avoid such, the Thirty have pureblood offspring at nine hundred times the frequency of the lesser clans.

The Thirty are physical larger, stronger, smarter and far more biotically powerful than lesser asari. The average asari is around 5'2 or 5'4, the average member of the Thirty is 5'10, with some topping six feet. The Thirty have sharper eyesight, stronger levels of eezo, even more robust immune systems.

The Thirty also developed many technological innovations far ahead of other asari. They were forging iron when other asari were still using stone, and the Silent Queen's innovations were rumored only to be possible because she had studied in her youth with the Thirty's innovators and scientists. Even today, something like 85% of all discoveries and research papers come from the ranks of the Thirty, rather than asari society in general.

Regular asari defer to the Thirty almost instinctual, hesitant and almost worshipful. The Thirty, in turn, are by turns both arrogant and brutally protective of lesser asari. The Thirty see themselves as the guardians of Thessia, the guidance of the race as a whole, and lesser asari simply have no problems or jealousy at this.

The culture of the Thirty is even more twisted and sickening than standard asari fare, with each Family jockeying for position , prestige, and power. Unlike most asari, who focus on building their clans and families first and then only on their position, a member of the Thirty lives or dies by manipulating the emotions and perceptions of others. The most inept and shy of the Thirty is capable of reducing most living beings to mere cats paws wrapped around their finger.

Each family of the Thirty has one House Matriarch, who is undisputed leader of the house, and usually between two and (depending on the size) up to fifty lesser matriarch, with a strict line of ascension that is constantly fluctuating dependent on social maneuvering that would make even Machiavelli weep. The matriarch's offspring are formally styled as "shlantha", a word that roughly translates to "princess" in English. Unless a princess is somehow disgraced or shunned, they will become the new House Matriarch upon her mother's death.

The Thirty are divided into two 'bloodlines' – the line of T'An, and the line of Vaas. T'An and Vaas were the semi-mythological figures that received the wisdom of Athame directly (and as fitting asari whoredom, by of course, having sex with her. Studying the asari makes one long for a hot shower sometimes). The descendants of T'An all prefix their house names with a T, such as T'Armal, T'Soni, T'Chath, etc. The descendants of Vaan all start their house names with a V, such as Vasir, Vabo, etc. The main difference appears to be interaction – the T'An line is more aggressive, the Vaas more passive. New adoptees into a house are given a slightly alterered name - for example, the asari ambassador is addressed as Te'Shora rather than T'Shora, as she is a recent member adopted from a lesser house, or Urala S'Vasir, who was adopted from the Clans.

The Thirty have had to replace houses only thrice. Since these Houses do not directly descend from Athame, but rather from interbreeding and absorbing the remnants of shattered Houses, they take names that do not start with V or T. House Chansai was the first of these, replacing the fallen House T'Urna, which was utterly destroyed by the Silent Queen in the War of the Queens. Chansai was obliterated in the asteroid strike that lead to the asari space age, and was folded into a new house, House Eala. The other replacement house, House Devir, was cobbled together from smashed Paladins of Athame and a handful of lesser family members, to replace House T'Curth, annihilated by plague just prior to the War of Queens.

The undoubted primary Family of the Thirty is House T'Armal, boasting over five thousand clan members and over half a million descendants in lesser clans. As the so called "First Among Equals", the members of T'Armal are unwaveringly arrogant, prideful, and vengeful. (Aria T'loak, the warlord of the Traverse, is a T'Armal princess hurled from her Family due to youthful indiscretions that shamed the House. That's what just ONE of them can achive – the conquest of the entire damned Terminus.)

Below the might of House T'Armal are the two greater houses, House T'Vaan (boasting four Spectres and half owner of the Serrice manufactory corporation) and House T'Shora (boasting several dozen massive corporations and owning a third of Illum.) While conceivably the three are almost always at odds, this infighting is strangely complacent, mostly revolving around keeping the other houses from ascending to challenge T'Armal. These houses are still massive, boasting well over two thousand members each, as well as at least a hundred thousand relatives in lesser clans.

Together, the three form the so-called "House of Storm", the high houses of Thessia, and between them they control most of the actions of the Asari Republic.

Below these are the 'greater houses' – T'Mal, Vallia, T'Suon, Vabo, and T'Rome. The "group of five" are heavily involved in the primary 'first landing' colonies that the asari settled heavily prior to their discovery of the Citadel, and as such, wield great strength in the galactic community but little on Thessia itself. House Vallia, in particular, is the most outspoken of the Thirty in calls for moving more and more asari from Thessia to mingle with the galactic community as a whole, to 'lead' them. They are much smaller than the main Families, each having between 300 and 500 members, with ten or twenty thousand relatives.

The remaining twenty two houses are much smaller than the Greater or High Houses. Known as the Guardian Houses, many of these had their ancestry in the Paladins of Athame. They rank in varying strengths. The larger houses, boasting between 100 and 200 members each, are Vakas, Vael, T'Yana, T'Sael, T'Moinda, T'Purice, T'Chmath, Vielsa, T'Koro, T'Baela, and Vakassa.

The smaller Guardian houses, mostly focused on one or two areas of interest, include T'Soni, Devir, T'Nama, Vathan, T'Zeli, T'Serrice, T'Cathus, Vurth, T'Appa, T'Benna, and Eala. These have very few members – usually between only a few dozen to about seventy actual members, with one or two matriarchs. They are constantly absorbing other lesser clans to boost their numbers, but most of these lesser clans end up spinning off again in a few centuries to lead House endeavors elsewhere.

Some of these families used to be highly placed. In ancient times, House T'Serrice and House T'Soni were High Houses, boasting thousands of members, and House Devir was so powerful at one point that there was serious discussion about breeding in with House T'Armal and honoring Devir by renaming them T'Devir. However, these houses have fallen on hard times, as they were conservative, clinging to power on Thessia, and missed out on the vast wealth and influence available in the first colony waves.

* * *

**The Lesser Houses**

Associated with the Thirty are the so-called 'Lesser Houses', although they style themselves as Families rather than true Houses. Each Family is associated with a given House, and modify their name accordingly. They are basically groups of associated clans that follow the House's lead.

Some of the larger, and more famous, Lesser Houses include Family Zeli'a, Family Devir'a, and Family Vathana'a. These lesser Houses are actually larger and more powerful than the House they answer to, and have been repeatedly tapped for the ability to rejuvenate the ranks of their superiors.

The lesser houses primarily serve as new members and allies of the greater houses, but are also the link to the lesser clans and the clanless. As such, each of the Families is seen as a filter, allowing only the best and brightest asari to ascend to the top of asari society , while retaining many of the most talented asari in a small, contained social environment for the use and profit of the Thirty.

* * *

**The Clanless**

After the War of Queens, many small clans simply fell apart , unable to support themselves and moving to the rapidly growing cities. With society moving from a hunter-gatherer, agriculture supported existence to industrially focused, the need for tight self-sufficient groups was less.

While many existing clans continued to exist, focused around their duties, many of the old hunting clans simply had nothing keeping them together in a coherent form. As a result, these clan members still associated with one another, but drifted apart, moving to support individual matriarchs rather than clan councils.

Over time, the majority of the asari population either joined the existing clans, or became clanless. Facial markings, once used to indicate clan membership, became instead expressions of personal beliefs, and the rise of siari further pushed the concept of 'race as clan'. The loss of clan control over breeding led to a marked increase in rampant sexual contacts and rapid-fire relationships or multiple relationships. As they migrated from clan to clan, taking new jobs and skills, their disassociation became more and more complete. Finally, with the exception of a few diehards, the old hunting and gathering clans were dead.

As it happened, this evolution occurred near the time many advances in technology occurred, making city life preferable to a hand-to-mouth clan existence in the wilderness. As asari have moved into the modern era, many asari see the clans as ridiculous cultural throwbacks, and work hard to build industries, businesses, and the like answerable only to the Asari Republic.

On the other hand, many of the clanless understand that without clan structures it becomes much harder to achieve any lasting permanence in the game of social standing and alliances. There are many rich and powerful asari who, by lack of clan support, have to go their own way, carefully trying to build alliances with other independent asari who may or may not betray them for personal gain. The lack of unity in the clanless is a major reason why the Thirty approve of this structure, for lacking personal clans any longer, many of the clanless instead aspire to positions in the Lesser Houses, or in the ranks of the many matriarchal groups that follow influential leaders in the Thirty.


	8. Chapter 8 - Asari Culture II: Expression

**A/N: ** _the next chapter of Of Sheep and Battlechicken has been ready for a while, but I'm waiting on feedback from my beta reader. There will probably be several more chapters of the Asari section (military, government, fleet structure, and important personalities) before a break to work on OSABC, then I'll alternate between the two. _

_Every single race is going to get the same treatment as the Asari, so this is going to be a BIG document. After I finish each race I'll do corrections and updates, so keep the reviews and ideas coming - if there's an idea you'd like to see explored, let me know. _

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

I'm finished with my more detailed examination of the actual components of asari culture. I'm extremely confused why this interests you, but I've done as you asked. I can only hope the sacrifice of Dr. Uraj is worth it.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** There is no such thing as an innocent in this dark galaxy. The innocents of humanity was lost the day we met the first Turian. The alien was never innocent.

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

ICARCUS-TWO-THREE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

Doctor Minsta ,

It should please you to know that the Night-Wind cell responsible for the tragic death of Dr. Uraj has been located and dealt with. You'd think that given the asari history with asteroids they'd be more careful with their colony worlds in a system with two asteroid belts. All we had to do was nudge several large nickle-iron stony asteroids into the proper trajectory and disable the tracking systems for the colony , and Panji is no more.

The Shadow Hand is pleased with your work, as am I. The Illusive Man is also highly interested in asari culture for his own reasons, most of which have to do with his attempts to infilrate their economy. We would prefer an unfettered examination of the society, as distasteful as it is, rather than focused insights.

The Iron General

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** Pity the misguided who follows the alien, but only once they are dead. The living traitors need only your bullet to serve Humanity best.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Art**

Asari art is a variegated thing, most of it what human artists would deem sublime, focusing on tenets and images of unity, exploration, the vastness of nature and the spirit, and pensive reflection. Asari statuary is always highly stylized, even iconized, with little to no realism, and asari paintings are biotic reactive, designed to be viewed with asari senses of electrical sensitivity and through the lens, in some cases of partners linked or bonded with the viewer.

Asari practice very little decorative arts , and eschew needless or gratituous ostentation or ornamentation. They prefer clean, curved lines, yonic or arched shapes, and curves that evoke the shape of an asari body. The colors white, blue, and to a lesser degree, yellow are very important to them, while reds and browns are disliked. Asari associate blue with life, oceans and biotics, white with cleanliness and an open mind, yellow with energy and freedom, and black with sexual release and intimacy. A pale green is the color of death, as the asari blood deoxidizes rapidly and the subcutaneous fluids that promote biotics give the skin that tinge. Purple is emphasizes stubbornness and determination, red speed and motion, and brown safety (associated, most likely with the vast brown stone walls that encircled the Thirty Cities).

The asari dislike haptic art and, while they do enjoy movies, prefer dance and a sort of biotic acrobatic mix of opera, religious service, and drama called the maress. They have a great attachment to themse of history, the valor of a single asari to save others, and of course, the triumph of cleverness and manipulation over brute force.

Artists are rarely individuals, almost all asari art is made by two, three or even more asari. A singular artist is seen as shallow, the more hands in the art, the more complex and worthy it tends to be.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Music**

Asari music is often muted and flatly polytonal to human ears, and is presaged on the concept of a theme that invokes certain memories. Rather than original works, many asari songs and musical works are cobbled together from a series of about a thousand songs and chants that date back into antiquity called the Atherion. Music links choruses or chords from songs in the Atherion into varying arrangements, each one thick with interpretations based on the musical components.

A good example of this is the asari song "Irirsai T'Va Kassa", often conflated as the closest thing to an anthem the Asari have. It is an interesting construction. The pieces of the song are from movements that imply supremacy, guile, the darkness of fear, the glory of the Matriarchs, the sensual delights of a group of lovers who all have taken one another, and the comfort of unity in allies. It is linked by various original pieces of tonal music, but these have no meaning aside from moving from one segment to another.

After exposure to turian and especially batarian music (whose complexity continues to amaze , the brutes have the souls of a Bach), some edgy asari composers have attempted to link pieces of alien music together in the same fashion, sometimes mixing in with the Atherion, others even drafting original pieces. This musical style, known as northess (the mixture) is seen as either a testament to the unifying beauty of asari music or jumbled garbage.

Asari entertainers are often group based, but in recent years, several solo musicians have arisen, although these remain more popular with aliens than asari. Asari musical stars are even more controversial, immature and tawdry than human ones, if that can be possible.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Entertainment**

Asari have a wide variety of team sports and games, most of them incorporating biotics. Swimming , biotic acrobatics, and biotic assisted gymnastics are popular, as is race hunting and clan-compettive sports. One game, tarass, is very nearly soccer with biotics and a dash of polo, using a biotic implement to score goals.

Asari popular culture has given rise to many shows , movies, and extranet venues. Gambling and games of chance are popular, as are puzzles and events that pit two asari against each other in tests of wits and daring. Asari eschew physical violence in all their entertainment, and there is not a single asari activity that doesn't incorporate some form of team play or at least have the option of it.

Asari adore parties based around communal tale-telling, casual sex and linking, and a sense of community and friendship. Often including feasts and drinking, dancing, and possibly even maniacal orgies, these parties are often thrown at the drop of a hat, but rarely if ever for serious events. Births and marriages are celebrated by more serious, somber and less carnal activities.

Refreshingly, asari children are more likely to engage in rough-and-tumble play and honest, simple games of individual achievement rather than stultifying unity than their parents , although most asari work hard to curb these tendencies at a young age.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Tourism and Events**

Part of the asari soul is in travel and mingling with other clans, so it is no surprise that asari tourism is a heavy part of their culture. Most asari make pilgrimages to holy sites, historical markers, and of course, the grand capital of Serrice, at least once in their life, but vacations to exotic, beautiful locales with a new lover is something of a regular occurrence with asari. Tourism is aided by the widespread belief that every new bonding should involve something memorable , to aid in keeping those memories available when one links with a new partner.

Aside from that, asari holidays and the like are sprinkled throughout the year liberally, almost twice as many as on the human calender, and the asari are devoted in breaking off from business or other serious pastimes to celebrate and explore. Asari are reverent about travel, and indeed some of their old religions saw travel and exploration as holy. As such, asari are usually quite mobile in their lives, willing to uproot and move to new cities or even new planets unless their network of companions and linked lovers is too large to support such.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Religion and Siari**

Very little is known about the old asari Athamian religion – even under truly horrific torture, the few asari priestesses of Athame we have captured and interrogated would only smile maddeningly and tell us it was not for the likes of us. We know bits and pieces about the rituals and the locations of a handful of temples, but every single holy site is locked down with military encryption, heavy defenses, patrols of multiple Justicars, and backed up with packs of Night-wind operatives or even Spectres. All of them are also rigged to blow with thermonuclear devices and are shielded with more than two feet of sensor-disruptive material. We know SOMETHING is going on, but the amount of resources to determine what is simply beyond us.

For all of that attention, however, only a few million asari still venerate the old gods. Most now embrace siari, which is a mix of religion, philosophy, and cult of personality. Siari is based around the concept that all is one – all asari are one, all things in the universe are one, all ends spring from the same beginning. It is a faith that implies that regardless of outcome or impetus, all actions are caused by a single primal cause and end with a single primal effect.

The mystery of siari is that each worshiper must find that cause and effect for themselves. Asari define it as the ability to let go of the needs of the self to embrace the other that is akin to you, but siari has attracted alien practitioners who come to very different results. Turians find siari to suggest that turians must be one with the ancestors to find their way. Salerians identify it as a sort of unified theory of everything. Humans who go in for this kind of metaphysical garbage imply that siari gives them the insight to see that humanity is strongest when it is threatened from without and that we must unify our urges towards a better form of humanity.

A key part of siari is communal mediation and linking with a matriarch, so it's no suprise that these people have garbage in their heads that makes them susceptible to further manipulation by the asari. There is no moral framework in siari – it claims morality is an attempt to bind others to a single point of view, but all points of view are important – nor does it champion anything aside from the asinine concept that individuality and uniqueness are bad somehow.

Even stupid turian ancestor worship is more truthful and honest than that. Asari have created a religion that justifies anything if it leads to unity, defines unity as oneness, and oneness as everything. From this completely psychotic stance, asari feel that any action they take, as long as they intend it to further the unity of all, is permissible.

It should be no surprise that siari also incorporates a great deal of meaningless mystical claptrap: that the entire universe is a conscious being, and that every life within it is an aspect of the greater whole, akin to a cell in a body. Siari claims that death is a merging of one's spiritual energy back into the greater universal consciousness , and that what one brings together during life adds to this greater energy, which drives all things.

* * *

**Asari Culture: City-states**

While asari have no overarching government (see the government section) , they are divided into varying colonies and , upon Thessia, city states. Each one of these acts as a completely autonomous and sovereign entity, although all bow to the needs and desires of the Asari Republic.

The city-states each have minor variations in cultural influences. Some are more or less focused on warfare, science, the arts, etc. When an asari must think in local terms, beyond the constraints of race but above clan or family, the best they can often do is on a colony or city-state level. There simply is no larger frame of reference – an asari who becomes an SA citizen defines loyalty as first to all of humans, then to the SA, and maybe then possibly to the city they live in. National concepts with widely varying languages, backgrounds and traits are utterly baffling and confusing to asari.

The City-states are quietly passive-aggressive towards one another, as are the colonies. They cooperate fully on the things that require interactions, but beyond that are standoffish, each defining it's own purposes as being the most paramount importance in improving asari society. Even this seeming individuality is a sham, though, as the Thirty are careful in balancing the power and influence each grouping has on asari culture as a whole. It is as if the Senate could somehow make one nation focus on the glory of making cars and another on the value of producing HE3 fuel, with little else mattering. This compartmentalization of cultures means the asari have many, many specialists for any task, but generalists are very rare.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Language**

The asari language became unified nearly ten thousand years ago, and is a complex mix of verbal communications, subtle pheremonal emissions, and electrical discharges that the asari can sense. Almost a good fourth of the language is tied up in the concepts and sensations from linking or bonding, and such is a vital part of asari communication.

The asari language structure is primarily noun-verb paired, with subjects leading a sentence and descriptors and verbs acting on it, based on where they are placed in a sentence. People and other nouns are often paired with what describes that persons relationships, or that thing's ownership, and events are often tied to motivations.

For example, "Mary walked to the store to buy a cake" would be rendered something like "Mary, who is paired with John, desired a cake to eat for sweetness, and thus journeyed there, alone."

"The car has a malfunction of the engine" would be rendered as "The conveyance of mine, which I value for speed and comfort, is not acting in the manner that it should, for it is flawed in the engine."

The result is a strangely formal , eloquent and long-winded language, which is often foreshortened by emotional and mental commentary mixed in.

Asari writing uses an alphabet mixed with very old pictoral 'image-thoughts'. These pictorals are akin to hieroglyphics, and are only used sparingly, mostly in the context of religious or sexual concepts. The written version was originally written in a series of curved lines , circles, and half circles, with location of the glyph noting pronunciation.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Facial Markings**

At one time in the past, each clan had it's own facial markings, which were applied with long-lasting paints of white, blue, purple, green or black from certain inks in fish bladders and bodies. As clans disintegrated, a great many markings ceased to have any relevance, but were carried down by descendants anyway.

In the modern era, most facial markings indicate a certain way of thinking, sexual preference, occupation, or mindset. A series of white lines and black dots that line the crests indicates someone who is focused on mental pursuits , with a sideline in warfare. There are thousands upon thousands of variations, and some are purely artistic.

A more common and recent facial marking is the mimicking of human eyebrows, started by Matriarch Benezia T'Soni some twenty-five years ago when she acted as the ambassador to Earth. Millions of other asari have taken up this craze, which basically indicates that the asari finds humans attractive and prefers human values to certain asari ones. Asari with these markings have begun to mimic human expressions such as raised eyebrows or the lowering of eyebrows during a frown.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Linking and Joining**

As I have stated many times, the asari view sexual contact as utterly banal, of no more import than a human inviting a neighbor in for a cup of coffee could be seen. Akin to this is the paramount importance of joining mind-to-mind in such sexual encounters, which enhances the memory transfer and web of connections between various asari.

Linking, the more casual version, is done during almost every sexual encounter, and is best described as a light joining of nervous systems. The asari feels her partner's pleasure, surface emotions, and physical sensations, and vice versa. This obviously makes sexual encounters with asari more pleasurable and intense than with any other race. It is addictive. I can't stress this strongly enough – Cerberus operatives and agents who link , however lightly, with an asari, are not going to forget the experience and will want to do so again. This must be avoided at all costs.

Linking can and does often lead to the second level of closeness, joining. Joining links deeper emotions, surface thoughts, and often the very nature of what it means to be a person, with that of the asari. Joining, at the very least, is required for an asari to become pregnant, and there appear to be varying strengths of such joins. Most of them also involve some level of memory transfer, bits and pieces that are emotionally important to a partner, sometimes involuntarily shared.

The cultural importance of these two activities is both casual and not-casual. Asari see no harm or real danger in linking and joining, and find it the best way to both explore potential partners for a bond, or fully enjoy themselves in sex, delighting in the companion's deepest emotional states. The linking is not a religious thing, nor is it particularly seen as life-altering for asari.

For many of their lovers or partners, however, who are alien, it is often overwhelming. Consider your spouse. You have lived with her for ten years, had two children. You have made love, had years at each other sides, knows how she likes her breakfast, and understand her very well, you think.

Then you link with an asari. There is no wondering if she's really enjoying sex, or if she cares for you or does not. There's no question that the party you went to she liked, or if she's cheating on you, or if she feels bored in the relationship. Every act of lovemaking is overwhelming, every gentle romantic evening is intense and you know more about her body than you do your own.

This is the danger, the allure, and the sickness that the asari bring. Once sampled, it cannot be forgotten, or ignored. Once fathomed, one cannot pretend any other sexual encounter is as sweet, or as intense, or as rewarding. We have tested this over and over, and the stupid joke about once you go blue you never go back is a hard, ugly truism.

Are there instances where one has linked, or even joined with asari, and left that relationship for other partners? Of course. Many such linkings or even joinings occur with exotic dancers , prostitutes, or merely free-spirited maidens unwilling or unable to pursue long term relationships. Certainly after some kind of traumatic event or hardship, especially if such is brought about by the link-partner, one could pull away from such allure. But the vast majority of such liaisons end with the partner snared for the rest of their lives.

Asari consider this the beauty of siari. I consider it mind-rape and Stockholm Syndrome.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Bonding**

While asari take linking and joining very casually, the act of bonding is taking with the utmost seriousness and even hesitance. Asari are, by their nature, beings that do not value one-on-one relationships over that of community, but many times two asari or an asari and an alien fit so well together that separation is not really an option. When asari feel that not having a given lover in their life diminishes them, they move to become one person.

For that is what bonding entails – the linkage of neural systems on such a total level that when it's done you have two people that are basically utterly and totally known to each other. Every thought and memory, every hope and dream and fear. Every physical impulse, ugly thought, and even subconscious drives or issues. These are all laid bare.

Asari bonding is , for all intents and purposes, permanent. While asari may go through hundreds, even thousands of lovers in their lifetimes, very few seem to take more than one or two bondmates in that time, and they focus on them to the exception of all else.

Asari bond with other asari only after having children (usually), more towards the end of their lives, while bonds with aliens usually occur at the start of the matron stages, for the purposes of producing offspring. The bond fundamentally alters the brain patterns of a human – scans show definate wave functions that are distinctly asari in shape and form. Bondmates often claim to be able to communicate telepathically (or rather, we suspect, through the bio-electric field of the asari, acting as a channel between the two now that their nervous systems are so fully aligned.)

A bonded asari who loses her bond-mate through separation is often embittered, taking up risky relationships to hope to recapture such closeness or burying themselves in sex to avoid emotional ties. An asari who loses her bondmate to death, on the other hand, is often shattered, with over half of such widows quietly withdrawing from society for a hundred years or more before recovering. Only the strongest willed asari would undergo such a harrowing twice. Every single known asari who has had three bondmates die has killed themselves, the pain is simply too much.

If linking and joining are fundamentally dishonest, due to the asari ability to control such and the overwhelming effect it has on aliens who undergo it, then perhaps bonding is the most honest thing the asari can do. It is the only real individual act that the asari have culturally, tying themselves to a single other person. Some asari have experimented with triple or quadruple bonds, but these usually fail, as very few people are strong enough to have such a multitude in their head their entire lives.

Bonding ceremonies are dignified and strangely touching. Far from the carnal , frivoulous and empty "all is one" siari garbage that occludes most other events such as childbirth, bonding ceremonies are intensely romantic and almost always private, between a handful of close friends and the bonded. The various clans and the Thirty have different methods of tying such bonds together. The Thirty use intricately braided cords to handfast the couple, the colors and patterns of the cords based on the family linage, hopes for the bond, and ancient fertility symbols. The cords are left to tie the two lovers together for a full day, and each must compensate for the loss of one hand by drawing on the bond to aid the other. The cord is severed at the end of the day, with it refashioned into a bracelet set into precious metals, or , on occasion, an armband, which is never to be removed even for a moment except in a handful of situations (like getting into a magnetic imager, etc).

Clans each have distinctive ribbons that are braided into a bracelet, one for each partner, which are exchanged, then ritually burned in a midnight ceremony under the moons of Thessia (or in a pinch, beneath any night sky). There are clan-specific dances, and the pair is given new facial markings, and finally the Clan Matriarchs will gift them with hammered silver bracelets of unity. Plain and unmarked, these serve the same function (and have the same limits on removal) as those of the Thirty.

The clanless have a simple, dignified ritual, where bondmates exchange slender bands of synthetic crystal, colored based on various themes. The crystal modifies it's coloration during a ritual bonding, shifting hues based on the deepest desires of the pair – blue for fidelity and a hope for children, white for unity in love, red for energy and long life, black for desire. The percentage of each bracelet's coloration is decided by each bond-mate's innermost thoughts, and are a public notice of why each has chosen the other. A mostly black bracelet is seen as a poor match, while a mostly red bracelet has overtones of more friendship than lust. A mostly white bracelet is seen as romantic and somewhat naïve, and a mostly blue bracelet as sweet and family oriented. Most successful bondmates have about equal proportions.

Bondings can and do fail over time. Divorce is an ugly thing, as each bondmate must go through a ritual debonding, forcing out memories and severing connections. This is only really possible with an asari bonded to another asari, alien mates are stuck with the link and the emotions it causes. Many divorces end with suicides. Broken bonds are seen as bad luck and a curse, and asari act quite superstitiously to such. Several once powerful matriarchs had their personal cults or even entire Houses laid low by the stigma of such an act – Matriarch Sorei abandoning her bondmate caused the Steelshape clan to expel all her bloodline, and almost a full third of House T'Soni angrily renounced their House and left when the century long bond of Matriarchs Benezia and Aethyta was sundered.

* * *

**Asari Culture: Death Rites**

Asari live a long time, but are neither invincible nor immortal. Death, for asari, is not feared, as many believe they return to the universe upon death, surrounded by the light of those who have gone before and dissolving into some sort of metaphysical eternal mind.

As such , asari death rites , while solemn, are neither the wild, angry fetes of the krogan, nor the dirgeladen sobfests that our own human funerals devolve into. If asari die on a planet, they are carefully lathered in preservative oils and laid in state under the sky for three days. Preservatives and mass effect fields keep away insects, predators, and bacterial decay. After this period, the deceased is ritually bid farewell to, and is immolated, with the family performing a shallow , non-sexual link to share memories and happy thoughts of the departed. There has been more than one occasion, when a bond-mate has died, that the widowed survivor throws herself on such a pyre, and never is this prevented or stopped. (Savages. You'd think a race of natural mind-rapers could invest in some mental health support for grieving widows.)

If the asari does not die on a planet, but dies in space, on a ship, or upon the Citadel, the body is immediately and forthwith ejected whole and unburnt into space, on a course for the nearby star, which will consume the body. Again, if more than one asari is present, linking and the sharing of memories occurs. If all the mourners are aliens, any asari present will attempt to give a recounting of the deceased's life.

All such funerals are coupled with a song , usually sung by a maiden, called a Remembrance. The Remembrance is one of the most ancient rituals the asari have, and one of the most mysterious, as it dates , according to myth, directly from the time of Athame.

The Remembrance is sung thrice, as the body lays in state or is being shot into the sun. It sings of how the asari lived, of the lovers she found and the things she explored, of the fears she conquered and the chances she took. It sings of any children she had, of her bondmates, and her accomplishments as the asari see them.

The final stanzas are the interesting part, and I apologize for the quality of translation, but the language of the Remembrance is the very oldest spoken form of asari, stubbornly not updated to the more modern grammar.

_Remember, as Athame remembers Thessia _

_Remember, as guardians of truth hidden behind a face of stone_

_Remember, as protectors of a truth too Dark to be seen_

_Of shores unseen, forests unwalked, mountains unknown_

_There is a Darkness that lives beyond the Last Star_

_There is a Rain of Black Leaves that will fall once more_

_Remember, when Mighty [Cytha?] does pulse thrice times_

_That in death, the Darkness can be breached to it's core_

The asari are not given to allegory, nor are they fans of subtle hints buried in cryptic wordings. The reference to Cytha is particularly troubling – if we are interpreting it correctly, Cytha is a neutron-star struck by a micro-black hole some twenty million years ago. The blow destabilized Cytha's usually rapid rotation, resulting in a spin-cycle that would spray x-rays across the ecliptic of Thessia's skies every fifty thousand to fifty two thousand years.

But when the stanza was written, by any measure, Cytha was in it's invisible phase, it's poles aimed no where near Thessia's view. And Thessian scientists didn't discover Cytha was a neutron star rather than a regular star until less than a thousand years ago. And yet, somehow this canto references this event.

It's worth noting that Cytha began to pulse roughly nine hundred years ago, visible to the naked eye on Thessia. We don't know what "the Last Star" is, unless the author of this maddening verse is speaking of the space between galaxies. Nor do we know or have any reference to a 'rain of black leaves'. The primary theory is that perhaps at one time Cytha was somehow synched up with the rogue planet that threatened to send asteroids crashing into Thessia, but then one must figure out how the writer knew that a rogue planet would cross the star's path and be captured in the first place!

We will continue to research this, as something bothers me about it, as if it's at the edge of thought and I can't quite place what I'm trying to say.


	9. Chapter 9 - Asari Government

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Asari government is both extremely transparent and extremely corrupt. a juxtaposition in human concepts but fitting for the asari. Their government is barely more than a conceptual agreement between leaders with very different visions beholden to a mob that emotes more than it understands, and is underlain with the true leadership that drives the asari race. Only the asari could craft a government that is little more than a sham and a distraction, and yet have more effective control over every aspect of their civilization than the most repressive dictator could dream of.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** To embrace the alien is to embrace that which is inhuman, to reject what you are for what you should never be. Oil and water do not mix for a reason.

* * *

**Asari Government Structures**

On paper, and on the lips of the average asari or outside observer, the asari government functions on but three levels – interstellar, embodied by the Republic; regional, embodied by the city-state or colony-state, and clan, embodied by the iron-fisted whim of the Matriarchy. There is very little administrative depth of the government on asari lives, and it's light foot is supposedly a demonstration of the unity of the asari race.

As with most of the truth behind these witches, that statement may be the most damnable lie ever uttered by a sentient being. The asari government that is seen is near upon to powerless, little more than a clearinghouse and coordination center for moving resources whence they should go. Asari do not need but a handful of laws, and to violate the least of them is death at the hands of a Justicar. Rather, asari unity (read, brainwashed idiocy) can be laid at the feet of the Thirty, who have masterfully ensnared their entire race and themselves in a fantasy story of who leads what.

As I have touched on in both the history and psychology sections, strong leaders that act by fiat rather than with unity end up falling to bad ends. Asari psychology does not – indeed, cannot – truly fathom that one being can command, that the input of the many is not somehow valuable. The rare asari outcast that operates beyond the light of the asari culture is so cold, icy, brutal and efficient in such leadership because they doubt all other beings. And the asari who lead the Republic are simply not cut of the same cloth.

Asari government operates in layers – a surface layer, to confuse and mislead, a middle layer, to coordinate and compel, and a final, hard layer, to restrain and discipline.

* * *

**Asari Government : Clan Councils**

For those asari in the Clans, it is the clan council that rules and guides their lives. Comprised of the matriarchs of the clan, gathered together on regular intervals, the council acts as a primitive, relationship and sex-based version of the more robust e-democracy system. Matriarchs know the whims and pulse of their children, their children's lovers and allies, and their followers. Each acts as a sort of group adviser and mediator, sifting through issues, spats, feuds, gossip. information and ideas to bring forth the balance of what that matriarch's followers desire, filtered through the experience and judgment of the matriarch. A cynical observer might doubt such impartiality, seeing the matriarchs as playing their own hand and paying but lip service to the wishes of their followers, but this does not seem to be the case.

These councils meet within the many clans, arguing, gossiping, cajoling and plying influence in information, memories, ideas and the swapping of young, promising maidens, business contracts, cash, favors or even an afternoon of sexual bliss, coming to a slow consensus that is at best the lower denominator of all needs. Humans would call it the worst kind of political gridlock, as such decision making is always slow, but combined with the conservative nature and long life of the asari, even the most minute decisions can take months, years, even decades.

As clan councils decide, they push representative matriarchs up to the Grand Clan Council, that makes decisions that affect all clans within that specialty. These are but the smaller councils writ large and with a pomp and gaiety that makes them seem akin more to a riotous party or orgy than a meeting of leading asari. Conducted once a decade, the Grand Clan Councils have the potential to shift the course of tens of millions of clan members and billions of affiliated asari. As such, issues brought to the Grand Council take even longer to decide – they have been arguing over whether clans should license their works within Thessian law or Citadel law for over five hundred years with no decisions in sight.

The spectacle of clan council is grist for rumor mills, information brokers, and the media, attracting great amounts of attention while granting remarkably little insight into true results. For in the aftermath of every Grand Council, the Clan Matriarchs report to a meeting of the Thirty, and the real decisions are made swiftly and quietly. Our discovery of this was a happy accident, brought about when a matriarch we bugged to determine if she knew information on a target ended up in this meeting with every House Matriarch, rattling off issues of real import and not bringing up trivial ones, and with the House Matriarchs swiftly saying yay or nay to each issue.

The clan members can be secure that their trivial desires do indeed receive a great deal of attention, but only those matters that impact the Republic or the Thirty are resolved with any real speed, the rest are allowed to languish or be buffered in endless debate until the issue dies or influence is brought to bear for one outcome or the other.'

* * *

**Asari Government : The Republic **

The asari republic is a construct, not a true government. It has no head of state, no senate, and no structure. There is no capital building, nor is there a civil service. Indeed, the very concept of "working for the government" was such an alien idea that the asari word for "civil servant" is a borrowing from salarian.

The Republic is an organization that functions much like a logistical resource center. As issues of importance to the entire race are brought to the attention of data management analysts known as Seekers, they prioritize each one. A request for new ships is balanced against the cost and benefits of additional funds for road construction on Illum or research into a disease on Panji. The Seekers will try to eliminate projects or requests that are too partisan, narrow in scope, or those better handled by clan actions or appeals to the Thirty. In order to make it past the Seekers, the asari bringing forth the project plan must be able to rapidly convince the Seeker that the goal is both public in scope and in the rewards it brings.

Seekers have wide latitude in determining an initial categorization, which is then moved up to a circle of matriarchs, who are chosen randomly during each election. The matriarchs have their own staff of information brokers, data analysts, financial advisory specialists, lawyers and public relations types. They carefully research each issue for exactly five days before rendering a decision. This period, called the Review, is never shortened, and lengthened only if absolutely necessary.

During the Review, the matriarchs in question can be lobbied intensely – indeed, this is expected. Bribery, seduction, the trade of opportunities and secrets, clan maneuvering and more all are both allowed and even approved of. The more effort spent in trying to convince the matriarch, the more influence and support must have been brought to bear and thus the more important the project obviously is.

Finally, spending and other financial requests are approved or denied, with resources and money routed to the correct clans or businesses. Military decisions are forwarded to the Hunter Circle for execution, while new laws or legal challenges to existing laws pushed to the open Democracy for e-voting.

That is, very literally, it. There are no ministries, no departments of war or the interior, no vast numbers of government workers rushing about, no budget negotiations, nothing but a few thousand data engineers, and a few hundred specialists working under a handful of matriarch's chosen utterly at random. The system ensures that no clan, or even the Thirty, can acquire any permanent advantage, that no political theory can hold sway for long, that no party politics or dictator can seize power. There isn't even a building to meet in – most of the participants work from their homes, or from small offices they share with clan officials. Some years the government has even met out in a park, tapping away on haptic screens while splashing in fountains.

It's quite a shock for alien lobbyists. a shift of thinking that most of them can't make. So used to politicians who rely on the goodwill of their subjects and being bound to campaign promises and the usual wheeling and dealing, they don't know how to handle hard-nosed and tired matrons who give them little give when inquiring as to the value or use of their proposals. The Seekers are chosen from the clanless solely, while the matriarchs that stand for office are all of the Thirty and their support staff from the Clans, so not even one segment of government can said to be ascendant.

Of course, this puts matriarchs of the Thirty in the ultimate position of saying "yes" or "no", which should shock no one. Asari insist these matriarchs, chosen at random, have little to no stake in what issues they usually vote one. And they may be right. But it is no government as we see it. The only asari who is a career politician in the entire race may be the Citadel Councilor.

* * *

**Asari Government : Hunter Circle**

Just as there is no unified government, military command is also not unified. Each city-state and colony raises it's own militia, formed by clanless maiden hunters, with matrons as NCO's and officers and commanded by the fierce asari commandos, paladins, or even matriarchs.

The closest thing to a central military command is called the Hunter's Circle. Here, in times of true interstellar war, will the military commanders of the Thirty take council and discuss strategy with the militia commanders of city-states and colonies.

The asari military is bizarre (see the military section). but it's command structure above the rank of Telsharess (roughly, war-princess) is truly baffling. The circle usually consists of a matriarch from each of the so-called "Guardian" houses, which are responsible for the Calling, a levy of militia conscripted from their affiliated Lesser Houses, city populations, and allies. These war-princesses do not coordinate their forces to attack an enemy, but to mislead him while each defends her own city or colony primarily.

The battle leaders of the High and Greater Houses, on the other hand, are there solely to plan strategy of a large-scale interstellar nature. For the Asari Navy is little more than the combined private fleets of the Thirty, along with a handful of ships built by and maintained by the Republic for planetary defense. This fleet is large – dwarfing that of the Systems Alliance – and supremely well equipped, but has no internal command structure. Rather, the leaders plot and work hard to ensure there is a strategy for every ship and fighter, so everyone has their own place.

Killing asari military leaders is utterly useless. They do not become demoralized, and their high command gives each one such wide authority that even the most fierce assault would result in asari units coming together and renewing the attack or defense.

* * *

**Asari Government : Legislative e-democracy**

The selection of the Governing Matriarchs, the Judges, and the slate of candidates for the Citadel Councilor are all decided upon by race-wide vote. Every asari that is an adult (as well as aliens who are bondmates of asari) gets one vote. These votes fall into two categories – votes on approved actions from the Republic, in terms of laws, or votes on which matriarchs can take which offices.

Many aliens see the e-democracy as the true asari government, and again they would be wrong. The issues are only decided upon by the masses once they have been vetted, altered, researched, and cleared by the Thirty. There is no such concept as populism or catering to the needs of the masses – these are usually defined by the Thirty.

That being said, the e-democracy is very robust when it comes to demonstrating the shifting nature of asari mindsets as a whole. Over time, asari governance has become less bound in tradition and focused on Thessia, and increasingly focused on expansion, economic dominance, and legislation empowering the clanless. The Clans have seen their powers and numbers erode sharply over the past two centuries, to the point where they represent less than 5% of the asari population, and while they remain important to the asari economy and culture, they are increasingly being sidelined as the average asari wishes more of a say in the events that affect their daily lives.

* * *

**Asari Government: The Justicars and the Law  
**

Asari law is very compact, with the exception of Illum, which is devoted to interaction with alien corporation and has thousands of laws designed to protect the asari and foster investment. For most asari worlds, the law is a handful of prohibited actions, all of which are punishable by the justicars.

Murder (premeditated or not, manslaughter is not a concept the asari recognize, nor is temporary insanity), rape (physical or mental), collusion against the government, fraud of any amount, theft of any amount, the sale of narcotics that can lead to mental damage, the enslavement of asari, and betrayal of the race are all punishable by death. The idea that an asari who steals an apple being put to death is probably shocking to many, but consider the unified asari culture. There are no asari homeless – the unemployed are given some level of work, either by the Thirty, the Lesser Houses, or the Clans, to ensure that no asari suffers. The only reason to steal becomes greed, and an asari who is willing to put her own desires ahead of other asari is seen as a danger. Likewise, fraud and drug dealing are also unacceptable as they injure the many for the benefit of the one.

Asari lawyers are quite common, although the vast majority deal with alien laws. not asari ones. There is no such thing as a trial in asari culture. Potential lawbreakers are detained and a link is forced, which allows no questions – innocence or guilt is known immediately. Incorrectly detained suspects who are innocent are let go immediately with apologies, the guilty are (depending on the offense) either fined heavily or given to the Justicar Order for execution.

Asari are inherently law abiding when surrounded by other asari, but most of the laws only apply to asari themselves. An asari who defrauds aliens is merely seen as clever, one who enslaves aliens as distasteful. Some crimes (rape, murder) are given no such exoneration because taking advantage of or even ruining an alien (a lesser being in the asari mindset) does not mean the asari would do so to another asari, but murder and the like imply a disregard for life itself, which is unacceptable.

Asari have a regular police force, which investigates crimes and regulates public safety. They have Clans that handle this, as well as smaller legal issues. The offenders against the primary laws, however, must deal with the Justicar Order.

Justicars enforce the law according to the Code, a long poetic document memorized by each Justicar. These asari several all familial connections, taking no permanent mates nor bearing more children, devoting themselves utterly to justice in the asari eyes. They do not have mercy, pity, or hesitation, they kill quickly and without malice. Their power is utterly absolute. While the Code limits the actions they can take against the Thirty and government in general, violation of the law puts every asari under their jurisdiction.

It's important to note the Justicars do not take note of, or care about, minor crimes, or the criminality of aliens. An asari who speeds her aircar through a restricted speed zone is going to get a ticket from the local police, not be murdered by a Justicar. Justicars only act when they know of a crime, one is reported to them, or they identify a potential ardat-yakshi.

* * *

**Asari Government: the Thirty and the Citadel Council **

The true organs of government, the Thirty meets four times a year in a vast conclave known as the Council of Matriarchs. Other than that, the Thirty spend most of their time maneuvering around one another in the other government arenas, manipulating and cajoling the asari to the outcomes they desire. The Thirty are the absolute rulers of their own domains, but the e-democracy means that they often end up having to work through various proxies. other members of the Thirty, or even the Clans.

The position of Citadel Councilor is made available to any matron or matriarch of the Thirty every ten years, along with the position of asari ambassador. The two work together to exemplify the will of the Thirty, often having weekly teleconference meetings with the gathering of House Matriarchs to discuss talking points and petitions placed before the Council.

The Thirty see the Citadel Council and all of Citadel governance as a game, a way to advance in stature and influence while aiding the power of the asari. Those asari with strong tendencies towards personal advancement and ambition often gravitate towards such positions.

The current Councilor, Tevos T'Sael, and the ambassador, Irrissa Te'Shora (an adoptee, hence the altered name) demonstrate this perfectly. Tevos is from a very minor house of the Thirty, one that one had less than 20 main members and under 200 affiliates, but she has parlayed her impressive skills at manipulation and persuasion into the chance to be one of the rulers of the galaxy, and as a result her House has grown tenfold. Irrissa. a recent addition to House T'Shora, one of the High Houses, is there to make sure Tevos does not act counter to the House of Storms and the wishes of the great Houses of Thessia, while making a name for herself to justify her own ascension.

* * *

**Asari Government: The Council of Matriarchs**

As mentioned in the last section, it is the Council of Matriarchs that is the closest thing we can find to actual governance. This shadowy conclave, comprised of the House Matriarchs and their advisers, meets four times a year in a highly secured fortress on Thessia, either directly or via heavily encrypted teleconference. The average asari sees rumors of the Council in the same way humans once thought of the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderburger Group, a consortium of elites operating in the shadows. But for asari, the concept that the mighty of the Houses meets to determine the course of the race is comforting and proper.

The Council acts with a haste and directness that is almost un-asari, eschewing the usual sexcapades and endless social games to work with admirable speed, directness, and ruthlessness. The Thirty do not trust one another, and in the modern era each has their own agenda, so when the Council meets only the most urgent and dangerous issues are discussed and plans put in place to nullify them.

Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to penetrate the security that surrounds such meetings. The Hall of the Matriarchs is guarded at all times by military security and Justicars, not to mention the private security forces of the Thirty themselves. Scans for bugs and other surveillance devices occur hourly, and the encrypted transmissions that link far away Matriarchs are done with one-time pads using keys in the hundreds of trillions of digits, sourced based on random background radiation from some arbitrary direction in the sky.

Nor can we dare attempt to kidnap and interrogate a House Matriarch – that would be tantamount to a declaration of war on all asari. The best information we have on how the Council operates is from rumor, hearsay, and the occasional rapid action taken by the Republic when no such issue has been put before the e-Democracy.

There are many unanswered questions as to why the Council meets in the Hall, which is a Temple of Athame, and why the Council is solely comprised of matriarchs who have lost a bondmate. We are not sure if such is some arcane requirement or a custom, although the Thirty are usually dismissive of such limits. Further investigation is required.

* * *

**Asari Political Parties: **

It surprised me and others. given the nature of government, that asari could have political parties, but on further reflection this is not so strange. These parties are less like organizations and more like loose mindsets and customs, designed to place asari thinking in lockstep with one another.

The parties do not operate as political parties in human government do. Rather, they are very loose social structures that define a framework of beliefs and proper actions to improve the unity of the race.

As such, there are only three political parties, each named on the core of it's beliefs. The first, the Collective Clans, focus on the output (and influence) of the Clans. Conservative, financially careful, and focused on the long term, the Collective Clans are the least reactionary of the political parties, and the most inward looking. When they ascend to power, the asari retreat, regardless of the cost. The party focuses on driving the Clans as the primary force behind asari industry and expansion, reining in the power of the clanless and rejecting new approaches and alien influences. While the Collective is not xenophobic, they are not very impressed with aliens and are the most outspoken in their belief that the asari are strongest when they focus first on asari matters and only then on aliens. The Collective submits grudgingly to the Thirty, but sees the future as being with the Clans, and the return to older values, and not in outward expansion.

The second party, the Hope, is both more liberal and yet somehow more cautious than the Collective. They are the party of the lesser houses, far flung and distant from Thessia. Cosmopolitan, in touch with alien cultures and sensitive to galactic events, they are very liberal when it comes to social issues, embracing change and incorporating (or perverting) alien cultures whenever they can. Yet. much like the Collective Clans, they also remain focused on the long-term and see alien influence as less of a opportunity for the asari to grow and more as a buffer for the protection of the asari. The Hope's caution is in the realm of changes to the structure of society – they are strong supporters of the Thirty, rejecting any idea that goes against the wishes of the Thirty and implying that without that divine leadership, the asari are lost.

The last party, the Vision, is the party that best represents the wishes of the clanless masses. Reactionary and often vitriolic, it rejects Clan influence and House manipulation in favor of a further leveling of society. The primary drivers of most colony expansions, the Vision's stance is one of accommodation and flexing the asari economic muscle to spread asari values. They prize aliens, seeking to use and manipulate them rather than merely profit off of them as the Hope suggests, or to ignore them as the Clans would. The Vision has no use for the older methods of asari collectivism, suggesting the best way to implement siari is to suffuse asari throughout the various races until each is little more than a different flavor of asari-dominated control. Thankfully, the reactionary nature of this party is not supported by the movers and shakers of asari society, only the powerless clanless.


	10. Chapter 10 - Asari Military

**_A/N: _**_I've recently updated my main fic (Of Sheep and Battlechicken) , but I still have some more on the asari before moving on to Salarians or Turians (not sure which is best to write about first, but probably salarian.) I'm also getting closer to releasing my Encyclopedia Biotica - an examination of what biotics is, how it is enabled in each race, measures of power, biotic and anti-biotic equipment, and dozens of new powers I've thought of. After I finish that I will probably move on towards more OSABC, before doing a series of one-shot stories and preparing to wrap up the ME1 segment and begin OSAB: Downfell. The goal is to finish A Season of Sorrow no later than the end of 2013 so I can focus entirely on the other two books in 2014. Then, finally, I will go back and update the Reaper Story and start on my post-ending fic. _

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

The asari military is a mishmash of city-state sponsored elite units, packs of asari commandos, huntress militia from the clans, and a fairly professional navy sponsored by the Republic. Despite the population of the asari, few of them take up military service, but one must keep in mind that almost all asari have biotics, even if they never bother developing them. Basic biotic defense and combat techniques – barrier, a simple throw, and a warp field – are taught to literally every single asari, and as such, the militia fielded by the city states is more dangerous than it might appear.

Interestingly, except for certain prestigious command positions, the asari military is fairly free of the social maneuvering and manipulations of the rest of asari society. This is probably due to the freewheeling, often shifting nature of military deployments, which makes building up a network of associates difficult, but also due to the asari focus on merit in terms of being able to be put in charge of the lives of other asari. One must prove their skill at fighting to be given such a chance.

My analysis of the military doesn't include the Night-wind, as these creatures are being researched by a different cell. After watching them pull Dr. Uraj apart like taffy, while I regret the loss of life caused by our retaliation, I'm more reconciled to the acts I once called terrorism in dealing with these witches. Thankfully, the asari military prefers not to work with them – even aliens being able to see the depravity of the Night-wind is not a good thing.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **Analysis is the bane of conviction. One cannot risk survival by embracing that which is corrosive to it.

* * *

**Asari Military Doctrine – ground combat  
**

Asari do not practice attritional or asymmetric warfare concepts within their ground combat units. With few wars in their history, the asari focus has always been on scouting, infiltration, the use of small special forces units to decapitate enemy leadership, and biotic-assisted static defense. Given the overwhelming strength of the asari navy, this is hardly surprising – the asari have never faced planetary invasion, colony revolts, or even large-scale wars since the War of the Queens in ancient asari history.

Asari military doctrine follows the concepts set down by the ardat-yakshi queen, Shatha. Her tactical and strategic genius is held in the asari mindset much as humanity looks at the writing of Sun Tzu. Shatha had zero confidence in the ability of large numbers of asari to fight in coordinated battles, which is why she eventually lost – the sheer size of the armies of the Thirty were able to beat her in attritional warfare. But this left millions dead, and proved her point to the Thirty, who were quick to take up her tactics instead, and used them to defeat the Silent Queen.

The core of asari ground doctrine is called the Concordat of the Strike. Asari units are assembled into what is called the Echelon. At the lowest rank are the independent city-state militia and mercenaries. Above that are the clan huntresses, above that, the commandos of the Thirty, and atop the echelon are battle priestesses, war matriarchs, and Justicars.

The Echelon formation is designed to tie up and occupy an enemy force – be it a landing party, invasion, pirate assault, or even a firefight between a few dozen combatants. The front ranks of the echelon, under the cover of the back ranks, fight defensively, pinning enemies down with biotics and automatic fire whenever possible.

The middle ranks of the echelon provide defensive barriers and, once the enemy is stopped, begin to flank. Huntresses and commandos strike swiftly, sowing chaos and confusing in enemy ranks, forcing enemy commanders to try to adjust on the fly to multiple lines of attack. The goal of the flanking attacks is not to panic or rout the defenders, but to force the commitment of any reserve forces.

Once the enemy is framed and prepared, the senior ranks of the echelon swing into action. Prior to that point, they occupy themselves with hurling powerful biotics into the ranks of the enemy, demoralizing them, and bolstering defensive barriers. Once the enemy is committed, the senior ranks will charge the enemy command, often using kanquess (vanguard biotic charge) to close distance rapidly. They will destroy the enemy command structure and utilize biotic explosions to cover their retreat.

Once central command is down, the asari will use pressure tactics to encourage routs and retreats, while flanking commandos will rush ahead to set traps and further disrupt enemy fallback.

The asari are masters at this, such tactics proving devastating in the war against the krogan. The asari take care to prevent such tactics from working on them by ensuring that sub-commanders are placed in the ranks of the first two echelons, with careful orders to protect their own lives and take command if and only if the senior commanders are defeated. This, along with asari unity and biotic abilities, means that asari military forces have never been routed or broken in combat.

Asari do not fear death, and most are convinced their fights aid all asari. By human norms, almost all asari units can be considered to have fanatic morale. Even when the echelon is broken, as with historical records showing happened during the Rachni Wars, the asari retreat in good order. They are not as unshakable as turians, however – despite their high morale and battle unity, if the echelon is disrupted so severely that even sub-commanders are lost, they will fall back very rapidly, spreading into guerrilla style hit-and-fade bands that mimic ancient hunting packs rather than stand and die to the last asari.

Asari do not have a 'male' culture, and as such, war is not seen as glorious. They place soldiers below intellectuals, artists, and even craftsmen in terms of social standing in most cases. Most asari drawn to the military do so out of a sense of duty to the race. This means that there is no 'machismo' culture in the military ground forces. Unlike humans and krogan, the heroes of asari military lore are neither strong fighters or even clever generals, but cunning huntresses that lead enemies astray and dismantle their assaults before they can find any purchase. A bloodthirsty asari is reviled, and most of this disposition end up in bands like Eclipse or Azure Kiss rather than in the military proper.

Asari are allowed to fraternize fairly freely, although the asari military will not accept bond-mates in the same unit, instead moving most bonded members to non-combat positions. Asari feel that their soldiers will fight all the harder if their lovers and friends are in the line of fire, and asari never leave their dead behind.

* * *

**Asari Military Doctrine – space combat**

The asari navy is unmatched in Citadel space, even by the vast turian forces. While the turians have more ships, and the salarians have higher overall technology, asari ships have three advantages that they have never surrendered.

Asari ships have vastly more effective mass effect cores than any other race. Even the cutting edge Tantalus core recently placed in testing by the Systems Alliance is no match. The asari "Cascade Cores" use shifting multiphase mass effect fields, balanced by a team of specialist biotic engineers, to allow both faster mass shifting and something like a short-range FTL jump. Nicknamed the flash-step, after the short kanquess move many asari soldiers practice, the Cascade cores allow asari ships to effortless dodge most long-range kinetic shots and even some heavy torpedoes. Despite constant and ongoing espionage efforts, no real progress has been made by any race to replicate this technology – only the asari have the biotic and mass effect field sensitivity needed to run such powerful, large cores.

The second advantage of the asari has been incredible advances in armor technology. The city of Silaris, the home of House T'Rome, pioneered a new kind of starship armor based on carbon-nanotubes. These tubes are heavily woven with a vaporized diamond substance, forming a crystalline lattice that is crushed by mass-effect driven plasma forges into super-dense, inflexible, heat resistant layers. The resulting material, called Silaris armor by most, is incredibly resistant to both laser fire and kinetic shots, requiring obscene amounts of direct hits to break through. An asari frigate sheathed in this material stood off two batarian cruisers for an hour before help arrived, despite taking over a hundred clean shots from 25mm guns. While the techniques behind making the armor have been discovered by other races, the expense is ruinous. The massive asari economy is the only one that can handle the cost of equipping ships with such armor – any other race would simply not have the resources. (Indeed, something like 4% of the entire asari GDP can be attributed to this cost alone. Given that it makes their ships nearly invulnerable, however, this expense is borne. Remember, asari like profit, but devotion to the race trumps even that.)

The final attribute of the asari navy's dominance is the nature of asari governance, and the flexibility given to the city states and colonies. As I mentioned in the government section, there is no back and forth between defense departments and governments – the navy gets every asset it thinks it needs, with astonishingly little graft or waste. Unlike other races, where disbursements compete with other government expenditures, the asari government has no real upkeep costs – most of the taxes it collects go straight to the navy, army, and to civil engineering with little overhead.

The asari fleet, as with other races, is built around the power of their dreadnaughts, supported by heavy cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. Asari military doctrine in regards to space combat is a faint mirror of their old surface naval tactics. Rather than forward deploy ships in bases from from home, the asari have a wide array of scouts and frigates looking for trouble, and rapid deployment strike forces to respond to incidents.

In battle, asari are graceful. They disdain brutal tactics like boarding for elegant plans, using their frigates and destroyers to harry an enemy and keep them distracted while dreadnaughts line up their shots carefully. Asari prefer to not engage fully in the fight at first, launching overwhelming numbers of extremely accurate long range bombardments with dashing close-in strikes by frigates, softening and tenderizing the foe, dancing in and out of his range using their flash-step maneuver. Their superior heat dissipation and armor mean they can trade shots for far longer without consequences, and when the enemy is damaged enough, only then do they go in for the killing blow.

* * *

**Asari Military Doctrine – ship design and influences**

Asari ships can be classed into the same rough approximation as human ships, but they were designed for very different tasks and functions. All asari ships have the same basic frame, a Y-shaped arrangement of three wings around a central, hollow core, which is due to the ring rather than ball shape of the Cascade Core in their mass effect drives.

Asari ships are (by human standards) luxurious, with even the smallest ships boasting comprehensive entertainment and exercise facilities. Asari shun sleeper pods for private, cozy quarters for everyone on board,and asari are not only allowed to freely fraternize but encouraged to do so to bolster unit cohesion. It must be noted these private quarters are shared spaces, like a mix between a den, bunk-room, and lounge. Asari in space do not like sleeping alone, as the ship's mass effect field, so much weaker than the gravity of a planet, makes them feel somewhat adrift and often leads to bad dreams.

Asari ships are not built for endurance at space – most patrols last less than two weeks, and asari naval personnel are fairly intolerant of longer patrols. Amusingly, asari sailors are far less rowdy than other races naval personnel, preferring to keep the drinking and orgies on the ship, presenting a calm, professional appearance to aliens ashore.

Asari build very solid ships, with good damage control, full medical facilities, and strong survival and evacuation modules even in the smallest frigates. That being said, asari ships are not good at fending off boarding parties, and most of their ships are either purely military or purely non-combatant in nature, lacking the labs and research facilities of SA ships, or the intelligence components in salarian vessels.

Asari do not use fighters and prefer lighter to heavier ships.

* * *

**Asari Military Organization – The Echelon **

As described in the military doctrine section, the echelon formation is what asari use in ground combat, designed to amply their natural mindset and ensure the destruction of foes.

The echelon is comprised of 'ranks' – the kasha (beaters, from when asari huntresses would have younger hunters make noise to flush out prey), the mishaan (archers), and the kalaqus (spears). These ancient terms are used both to embrace olden culture and as reminders of one's place in the military formation.

The kasha are usually light militia – independent, mostly – arrayed in a broad front, stiffened here and there with Republican Guard units. While they are going to take the most losses, they are also afforded the most protection from biotic fields generated by the next two ranks, acting as shields to take cover behind.

The mishaan are commandos and battle matriarchs, along with some more professional militia members and lead by impetuous Royal Paladins. Utilizing the charging force of kanquess, cover, or cloaking, they will slip to the flanks of an enemy and attempt to turn them. The goal is not really to achieve a flanking maneuver, but to force a division of strength and the committing of the reserves of an enemy force, which would normally surround any command units. The mishaan also contains Lifeshapers and powerful biotics, both of which work to mitigate damage taken by the kasha.

The final rank, the kalaqus, is almost entirely war priestesses or powerful matriarchs from the Thirty, wielding titanic biotic abilities and coordinating events with a handful of leaders. Their job is to hurl pure biotic power at the foe, shaking and scattering their lines, until such time as the mishaan have drawn off defenders, and then to thunder in, carving a path through the enemy lines and slaying their command staff.

The echelon formation is built to the strengths and weakness of asari combat. Unwilling to field large numbers, and unfamiliar with stand-and-fight tactics, the asari must find ways to leverage their power as a force multiplier. The echelon formation prevents close quarters or melee combat, which would be disastrous for the lighter built asari against turians, krogan, or other foes, and also ensures unit cohesion by having each part of the military force work with the others.

* * *

**Asari Military Ranks  
**Asari do not have 'enlisted' or 'officer' ranks as we understand them. They refer to three graduations of rank bands, in order of seniority. But all asari, with the exception of the Thirty, start at the bottom and must work their way up. Even Justicars must, for those who wish to join the order without military experience must serve for years in the military to prove their skills.

The bottom ranks of the asari are called the lasha (shoreline). There are five ranks, roughly translating to : beginner, novice, practiced, skilled, and master. By our best estimates, skilled and master are about the same as human chiefs and master chiefs. There is no such thing as 'time in rate' in these system – there are ancient tests of skill involved, for coordination, targeting, biotics, and the ability to think on the battlefield. An asari who can master them all can go from beginner to master in a day, one who cannot can spend five hundred years in the military and not advance at all. For most asari, becoming a Master takes about ten to twenty years, sometimes more or less.

Those who achieve the rank of Master are allowed to move from the various independent militias to more prestigious units, or to advance to command the independent militia. Militia commanders have no rank beyond that of "grand master", but often when dealing with multiple militias, the various leaders will elect one of their own as a "high grand master".

Masters who go on to other units enter the furlasha (shallows) and must climb five new ranks. Three are for warriors (rough translations would be cleared, enlightened, aspirant) and two are for leaders (seeker, finder). These leadership ranks are not officers, but just that, leaders – they inspire by doing, by leading from the front and acting more like NCO's than true officer corps.

Rarely, asari enter the Republican Guard, or the Republican Navy. The mirlasha (deeps) is the rank structure for these rates. It is more formal than the other two, with four junior and three senior ranks. The junior ranks (trainee, trained, skilled, and master) mimic the ranks of the basic military, but the senior ranks (lieutenant, captain, war mistress) mimic more alien rank structures.

The asari military rank structure, as I mentioned earlier, is refreshingly merit based. To ascend its ranks asari must prove themselves both in battle and in testing. Asari do not often participate in cross-species training, with the exception of asari commandos, who do so to further their knowledge of enemies they might face. Asari have no war-fighting colleges or N7 academies – the closest thing they have is the Lodges of the Hunt, and those are more akin to finishing schools for assassins than professional development centers.

Likewise, the asari have military structures no one else has, such as the incorporation of siari into the military training routine, and the lack of any form of logistics, which are instead bidded out to asari private corporations.

* * *

**Asari Military Units**

_Independent Militia: _Clanless militia raised directly by the Republic, these are usually young maidens with little experience. Given light armor and assault rifles, they are where most asari begin their military career. As they are sponsored directly by the Republic, they are not responsible for paying for their gear, and most of these militias have identical equipment. Most serve for ten to twenty years in a militia, upon which they either take up a new task, or move further into the militia. They lack support units and equipment, but most can use their biotics fairly well, and their rapid-fire fragmentation assault rifles are good at both medium and long range. On occasion, House or Clan forces will join independent militia for training.

_Clan, City State, or House Organized Militia (Spear of City): _City-states, colonies, Houses, and the Clans each have the right to raise up to three full battalions of troops for defense. Better equipped than the independents, at least some of these militia have already served their full term in the independent militia and have good experience. Some of the militia are mechanized, using light hover-tank troop transports or gunships to move from place to place. As with the independents, most militias require a ten to twenty year commitment. They have their own leaders, either commandos or in the case of a House unit, a Royal Paladin.

_Elite Guard : _Lifer asari military vets, these are the hardened soldiers of the city states or Houses. Often backed with armor elements, this force includes both war matriarchs and asari commandos. Flexible and using state of the art equipment of either asari or alien make, the Elite Guards often are the main battle units of any large asari military deployment.

_Republican Guard Unit : _comprised of Republican Guards, this unit answers only to the Republic, and is often dispatched to support other forces. This is the closest thing the asari have to a regular infantry military, and it shows in their higher level of organization and discipline than the often disorganized packs of huntresses seen in the militia.

_Fist of Athame: _Clan armed forces, roughly the equivalent of the Elite guard of a House, but lead by War Priestesses of Athame, these traditionalist forces use only asari weapons and armor, and rely more on biotics than technology.

_Royal Hunting Party _: Occasionally, a band of Royal Paladins from one or several Houses will band together with battle matriarchs, commandos, in some cases Specters or even alien assassins, and follow a Justicar into battle to deal with a criminal or other threat to the Asari Republic. This sort of event hasn't happened in over three centuries, the last occurrence to hunt down a krogan warlord who'd killed a matriarch. The Hunt is considered sacred, a revenge killing for an affront to the race, and aliens invited along are given the highest honor the asari can give another being.

* * *

**Asari Infantry Types**

A note about the soldiers: regardless of rank or what kind of soldier they are, all asari are equipped with top of the line equipment, either of asari make or the best money can buy. Even the greenest asari maiden fresh from the Clans will be sporting Mark X armor and brand new weapons. The asari have no real concept of 'garrison units' or sacrificial forces, and their economy allows them to outfit each and every soldier with the best gear and equipment.

Additionally, remember: even the militia units have years of training. A 'green' asari militia unit would not match up unfavorably to a mainline A-level infantry unit of the line in the SA military. Even fresh soldiers have limited biotics and five to ten years of training behind them. Despite my disdain for their culture, do not underestimate the asari or think them weak. They are the most dangerous aliens in the galaxy bar none.

Finally, asari units do not specialize in rates like humans or turians. Commandos are cross-trained in a bewildering litany of tasks, but as a rule asari don't have dedicated support soldiers other than Lifeshapers. Logistical and organizational aspects are outsourced to asari companies, and technical and repair services also outsourced. Sailors do have functional rates, such as navigation and gunnery, but asari sailors are expected to cross-train so heavily that the loss of anyone on the ship can be filled in by another asari seamlessly.

_Militia Soldier:_ Militia are maidens with limited battle experience, acting mostly as garrison units, guards, and the front rank of assault forces. Usually they wear light, form-fitting armor, carry the asari frag rifle, and perhaps a handful of grenades. Quick and agile, they use barriers and can throw basic biotic attacks.

_Militia Huntress:_ a more senior militia member, huntresses have at least 20 years experience, and have been trained in stealth, stalking, tracking, and info-war techniques. Using the old asari hunting methods, these warriors are equipped with sniper rifles, sub-machine guns, and asari close-quarters hunting blades charged with biotic energy. They wear packs with compressed rations and water, and can forage and operate far from lines for long periods of time.

_Lifeshaper:_ asari medic, usually with some military training, but mostly deployed to mitigate casualties. These medics are deployed with heavy armor and actual shields, eschewing biotics, and packs of medical supplies and medigel. Armed with the heavy blast pistol, they rarely engage in fights except when forced or covering the evacuation of the wounded or civilians. Lifeshapers are all very brave, but are not real combatants.

_Republican Guard:_ Professional trained infantry, the Guard is the rough asari equivalent to Salarian Shieldbreakers or human A-rate marines, long-term lifer military soldiers. The Guard is small, barely number a half million asari, but is heavily trained. Each Guard wears light powered armor, with built in weapons systems including a neural whip and dual shield generators, and carries a scaled up version of the Acolyte blast pistol called the Spear of Athame. Fully automatic and equipped with an under-barrel frag grenade launcher, this weapon is vicious against enemies in ranks or other tightly packed locations. Guard members practice support biotics, cross train with Lifeshapers to learn first aid, and generally act as a thin line of stiffened defenders around locations the asari prize above all others – the Citadel, the Destiny Ascension, certain temples, factories, etc.

_Commando:_ asari in the Republican Guard, or more rarely, clan Elite Guards, who catch the eye of their instructors are tapped to go to one of the many "lodges of the hunt" on Thessia, who train the asari special forces known as commandos. Most are matrons, with over two centuries of combat experience, and almost all of them are master biotics. Equipped with powerful sniper rifles, rapid fire light machine guns, and even augmented-strength bio-modification of their muscles, these are some of the finest light infantry in the galaxy. They are specialists at sabotage, flanking, biotic defense, and above all else intimidation. Most of them are religious devotees, spouting siari garbage even in combat, and believe they sacrifice half their life so that the asari can grow stronger. Commandos have no set load-out, armor, or weapon – each is granted a gift of funds when they complete their training to equip themselves. Most answer to the Clans or the Thirty, but some city states and even corporations have sponsored commandos.

_War Priestess_ : religious fanatics who worship Athame, these are even more deadly (and crazy) than asari commando forces. They wear no armor, only robes (or in some cases, go stark naked) and powerful barrier fields, and wield no weapons other than a ritual curved sword charged with biotic energy and a powerful set of biotic attacks they teach to no one else. Yet almost no one has ever even survived an encounter with them, much less triumphed. Their biotic strength is anomalous, enhanced with a large, overlapping gauntlet and pauldron that appears to be a scaled up, powerful bio-amplifier. The swords, charged with shifting warp fields, can cut through the armor on a Mako like butter, and their lack of armor means they are incredibly agile in combat, often using mass effect fields to render themselves nearly weightless as they flip and dance through combat, singing praises to Athame and killing everything in their path. Other asari hold them in a mix of awe and dread, and they are rarely deployed.

_Battle Matriarch:_ Asari commandos usually retire upon reaching 600 or so, settling down finally to start the families they delayed in service to the race. But on occasion, after raising their children, these women put on their leathers again, as leaders of the commando forces. Battle matriarchs are as to asari commandos as the commandos are to regular asari. With biotics that can crush a gunship in flight, or knock aside a main battle tank with a throw, each one is a living siege engine. Too old for the gyrations of their younger days, these matriarchs wear heavy armor, and wield heavy weapons to match, using them to break shielding and then letting fly with powerful biotics. As befits their age and power, most asari forces are commanded by these asari.

_Justicars_: the supreme ground combatant of the asari, Justicars are feared for more than their ability to dispense justice. Only those asari who display the most titanic of biotic strength are accepted, and then they are often doused in Thessia waters for months on end to augment their power. Justicars wear no armor, often instead wearing flimsy, sexualized jumpsuits and trusting in their barriers for defense, and using a horrific combat shotgun called the Disciple. The shotgun fires clouds of microscale flechetting submuntions, which break into armor piercing needles that explode, tearing open armor, creating craterous wounds that burn and boil. The Justicars are all master biotics, using some biotic abilities that we can't even really classify, such an ability to rip the life from foes and leave their twitching corpses without a mark on them or their armor, right through their shields. Justicars do not retreat, do not falter, and are impossible to intimidate. They can shrug off wounds that would kill a krogan in their single-minded determination to complete whatever task they have set themselves.

_Royal Paladin:_ when the Thirty go to war (which is extremely rare), they kit themselves out in war-gear and panoply that would shame the House of Windsor. The Thirty usually have at least some of their house given over to the role of paladin, a professional warrior and champion of the House who fights for the glory of the House and leads any House forces in combat. Equipped with highly decorated powered armor suits standing seven to eight feet tall, wielding biotically charged monomolecular blades and surrounded by hovering combat drones, each Paladin is a nightmare on the battlefield. A natural general and leader, they are inspiration for other asari forces, capable of defeating dozens of foes with flashy biotics and sweeps of those great blades. When they use ranged weapons, most rely on Adept rail cannons mounted to their oversized battle armor. Out of their powered armor, they wear top of the line kinetic barriers and ritualized light armor decorated in ivory, blue and gold. It sounds ridiculous, but watching these asari in combat is chilling, and it's easy to understand why the Thirty embrace this sort of drama for their warriors.

A final note of caution: human military forces are built around an attrition-specialist-leader pyramid, where he rank and file protect those who are more equipped to deal with threats, and the leaders guide events but are not usually combatants themselves. Our officers are trained in academies, picked from a social elite, trained for leadership and inspiration, tactics and only then military skill.

Asari value all of their troops. While their echelon formation, on the surface, seems to be willing to sacrifice lesser troops, the middle and last ranks are constantly providing biotic barrier protection to these lesser troops, significantly lowering any casualties. But more than that, asari have no concept of officers as we do. The only way an asari goes through the ranks is by service. An asari Battle Matriarch spent at least 50 and probably more years in the militia, before serving in the Guard, and then becoming a commando, and finally returning to their ranks. As a result, the higher ranking an asari is, the more dangerous they are.

* * *

**Asari Armor and Support Assets**

The asari have a fascination with hover vehicles, not surprisingly since such vehicles handle well on land or sea, and much of Thessia is ocean. Asari armor has never had a severe test, however, with most of its classes only seeing limited action in the war against the Krogan, and much of it's usefulness is theoretical.

Asari have four main battle vehicles:

The **Moonrise** light scout craft is a ground hovercraft, with light armor and dual mass accelerator cannons, holding about five combatants, and is often used in scouting. Moonrise class scouts have been updated for the past thousand years and haven't changed much except to incorporate modern shielding.

**Sunrise** light battle tanks are high speed flanking units, designed to goat and break infantry, equipped with plasma flamethrowers and microwave emitter weapons, as well as a light cannon. These strangely vicious machines were used to great effect in the war against the Rachni, and were hated by the Krogan as well, making them a primary target of missile and rocket fire. To counter this, auto-targeting warp flak generators were installed with VI fire-control systems to track incoming missiles.

**Storm** Main Battle Tanks are huge, forty foot long behemoths equipped with triple mass effect cannons and a wide array of anti-personnel weapons and a small GTS missile battery. They were built in the years after the discovery of the turians, when there was tension about the Hierarchy joining the Citadel races or declaring war, and have been updated repeatedly since then. They serve as the anchors of the echelon formation back ranks, combining the functions of main battle tank and artillery. Slow and lumbering unlike other asari hover units, their armor is thicker than some starships.

**Windsong** gunships are similar to the A-61 aerospace superiority gunship used by the Systems Alliance, with multiple rocket pods, integral barriers, and a dual-phase rapid firing mass accelerator in the nose. Less well armored but more maneuverable, these units have SSTO capability and can fight in atmosphere, low orbit, or deep space with no issues. They are the only real air units the asari field, as asari do not use fighters of any kind.

Asari troop transports are tracked, heavily armored and fitted with ECCM and jamming technology to keep their contents safe from missile attack.

* * *

**Asari Ship Classes**

The asari mindset to naval forces is different than most navies. Asari ships are designed to work in tandem with each other, covering blind spots and enhancing performance based on overlapping fields of fire, rapid VI coordination between ships, and communal comms relays. Unlike human ships (designed to draw a force into dreadnaught range and to flank them with fighter assaults) the asari navy is strangely capable in direct throw-downs, shrugging off shots with arrogant grace and evading heavier fire to deliver surgical, almost elegant blows.

Asari seem to prefer larger number of frigates and cruisers, with fewer dreadnaughts. They have never maximized their allotment of dreadnaughts under the Treaty of Farixen, but have vastly larger numbers of cruisers than other races, even the turians. The overall turian navy is larger, but only by a few dozen vessels – and all of the asari ships have Silaris Armor.

_Frigate: _The asari frigate is a deceptively fragile looking thing, a hoop with four small wings off coming off of it. Equipped with heavy mass accelerators at each wingtip, the ship can easily blow a SA destroyer in half with four direct hits. They boast a collimated GARDIAN array of pulse emitted blue-green lasers, which are more focused in atmospheres than standard red-orange lasers, and can tear apart fighters in a spray of burst fire. Frigates are used as scout ships, flankers, and to drive into enemy lines clearing the way for heavier ships. They are named after fish on Thessia.

_Raider: _A cross between a destroyer and a landing assault craft, the raider serves as the delivery vessel for asari commandos and other special forces. Raiders are more heavily armed than frigates, but are primarily designed to batter through station defenses or landing zones and disgorge asari commandos to wreak havoc. Raiders have superior GARDIAN defenses, but can be overwhelmed by missile fire. They are named after famous hunters and warriors throughout history.

_Light Cruiser: _The four cruiser variants are all built off of the same hull, but each is equipped in a unique manner and given very different roles. The light cruiser is a scouting cruiser and a leader of frigates into battle, using heavier weapons to pick off challenges from enemy cruisers. Equipped with top of the line sensors and optics, light cruisers most often operate on the asari frontier, or act as first-alert responders for remote colonies. They are typically named after stellar events.

_Storm Cruiser: _The storm cruiser is equipped with very heavy shielding, redundant armor, shock absorbing struts, and a host of other damage mitigation features. It is designed to deliberately close in and take hits for other vessels, spraying GARDIAN fire to shoot down missiles and jam incoming weapons. Equipped with powerful ECM and ECCM suites and heavy missile batteries, it gets up into enemy lines, fouling maneuver warfare attempts and generally acting like an ass. Assaulting these ships is pointless, as when they go into battle they discharge atmosphere to suppress fire and the whole crew is in battle armor. I've seen footage of storm cruisers taking direct hits from krogan dreadnaughts and closing in, the crew singing and laughing. It is no surprise that these ships are mostly crewed and lead by religious fanatics of siari, or worse, priestesses of Athame. They are named after asari priestesses of fame.

_Battle Cruiser: _The polar opposite of the thuggish storm cruiser, the battle cruiser is a command and control ship, coordinating the actions of other vessels and the fleet as a whole, packed with communications equipment and repair labs. Boasting long range weapons and precision targeting, it tends to act like a sniper, hanging back and making sure the asari formations do not get flanked. These are capable warships on their own, however, and when required they are capable of getting into the line of fire – but they prefer not to. They are named after philosophical matriarchs.

_Torpedo Cruiser: _The volus love of missile and torpedo technology (taken to utterly preposterous levels with their dreadnaughts, which has more missiles than fucking Arcturus station) has influenced many other races to rethink how they approach missile weapons. The volus defense of Irune in the Krogan war, where lightly armed volus merchant ships with strapped on missile pods blew apart an entire krogan war fleet, was an eye opening experience for the asari, who had written off the volus as money-obsessed wretches. The torpedo cruiser is the final result of this reassessment, built in the past forty years and viciously effective against pirates who can't afford the expensive ECCM gear needed to stop masses of disruptor torpedoes. The cruiser has a lighter weapons load otherwise, and once it has disgorged its packs of missiles and torpedoes is likely to withdraw, but it can crush a dozen ships with easy if it can connect with it's shots, and the asari like jumping them into a battle about midway, swamping unsuspecting foes with a sudden wave of missiles that are too close to evade. Amusingly, the asari name these vessels after the the family of Matriarch Semanya, who spent millions of credits to ensure she could be the first asari with volus-asari offspring. (Needless to say, volus lovers are not highly sought after by asari.)

_Dreadnaught: _The asari dreadnaughts are massive, equipped with some of the biggest guns and best shielding in the galaxy. Larger than human dreadnaughts, they have a crew of a thousand, and said crews tend to form 'military clans', fiercely devoted to their ships. The Thirty sponsor most dreadnaughts, but the Clans as a whole sponsored two, and Illum five. Dreadnaughts, unlike most races ships, do not act as the center of the fleet but are deployed forward, aggressively, and then fire when flanking disruptions end up turning the line of battle to one side or the other. Unlike the other asari vessels, which are graceful enough and have powerful enough mass effect cores to operate in atmosphere, the massive dreadnaughts can't even enter low orbit. Serviced only in space, dreadnaughts tend to spawn their own cultures and quirks, and over the centuries, almost all have been customized in one way or the other. Dreadnaughts are named after concepts found in siari.

_Destiny Ascension: _The single most powerful ship in Citadel space, the DA was the joint effort of the Salarian Union and the Asari Republic to build a flagship for the Citadel fleet. The salarians wanted no part of having the ship as part of the salarian fleet (to them, prestige is like painting a big target on your forehead) but were happy to show off their technological prowess to their new allies. As a result, the DA is, even after hundreds of years, probably the most advanced ship in space. Boasting a main spinal weapon nine times the size of the largest SA dreadnaught guns, three synced mass effect cores, and three feet of Silaris armor under kinetic barriers adapted from city shielding units on Sur'Kesh, the Destiny Ascension is a dreadnaught killer. Every war-game scenario run shows that it requires between six and nine dreadnaughts to inflict significant damage on this monster, and that there is only a 35% chance that such an action would end with victory for the attacker. The DA is crewed by only the finest asari specialists, and commanded solely by members of the Thirty. The name is the highest study of siari, where destiny ascends to reveal fate or some other such gibberish.

* * *

**Asari Military Equipment**

Asari weapons tend towards the repeated utilization of a few common themes. Asari never applied the mass accelerator to personal weapons in the same way most races have, instead focusing on the capability of the mass effect field to hurl plasma or micro-explosives. The asari also never forgot their roots as nomadic hunters, and their natural biotics means that blades and spears (usually poisoned) are very common.

The natural asari flexibility and agility means that most younger asari dislike heavy armor, and the strain of lugging around lots of gear on the body means they rarely use heavy weapons either. That isn't to say you can't find asari with huge sniper rifles or giant shotguns – but most prefer lighter, more subtle weapons, and the use of biotics to back them up.

All asari weapons take advantage of the asari's natural mass effect field to reduce kickback. This has the side effect of tiring the asari a bit faster than normal, but being able to fire light machine guns with no recoil can't be discounted.

Asari weapons are manufactured by two companies : the Serrice Council (based in the capital, a Clan Organization) and the Armali Council (based in Armali, dominated by two Guardian Houses, T'Soni and Devir). Serrice provides weapons and gear mostly to the Clans and clanless, while Armali focuses more in supplying wealthy off-world asari and has exclusive contracts with the Thirty.

Asari units also use weapons from Armax Arsenal, and a handful of sniper rifles from Haliat Armory. However, since these weapons can't take advantage of the kickback reduction, most asari prefer to use traditional asari weapons.

Both asari warp swords and Disciple shotguns are handcrafted by the Steelshape Clans. While they have updated many of the methods used to produce the Disciple, a warp sword requires over fifty years of crafting to produce, and each one costs millions of credits.

Asari weapons include:

_Devotee_: this asari submachine gun fires explosive submuntions at a blistering rate. While each impact is minor, it can stagger and knock down foes reliably, and is very good at overloading and cracking shields, allowing biotics to take effect.

_Initiate_: the asari sniper rifle, this is an elegant vicious weapon. Firing a hollow slug in a double-action, the rifle is lightweight and easy to carry. The slug explodes on impact, scattering corrosive particles and polarized magnetic dust, which disrupts mass effect fields and biotics for a few moments. Against shielded or armored foes, this is dangerous enough, but against other biotics relying on barriers for protection, it's lethal – the blast shatters the barrier and sprays corrosives into the target's face, leaving them wide open for a second shot or biotic assault.

_Spear of Athame:_ a savage assault rifle, this is a larger version of the Acolyte, coupled with a grenade launcher under the barrel. It fires 'warp bombs', impact triggered mass effect canisters that when detonated created uncontrolled and out of sync warp fields. These have the effect of breaking molecular bonds on what ever they hit, generating a blast of plasma that explodes outwards. This weapon has an element of EMP, devastating to shields and electronics, and can stagger foes with the blast.

_Disciple_: the Justicar shotgun, now beginning to see use among commandos after centuries of wrangling. Each one is hand-crafted by Clan artisans, custom fitted to it's owner. It's mass generator fires clouds of explosive micro-munitions, that break into detonating needles. Each blast thus blows a large chunk out of whatever it hits, and continues to burn with minor plasma fires for several minutes afterward. The multiple explosions ensure it almost always knocks down what it hits. Even a krogan hit by this weapon would stagger to their knees, and Justicars use this moment of weakness to execute their targets. I would strongly advice using long-range sniper weapons against anyone equipped with this shotgun – we simply do not have any armor strong enough to prevent our forces from being pulped by it.

_Adept_: the asari version of heavy weapons, the Adept is a rail-cannon, using both mag-chains and mass accelerators to hurl a slug of metal at a significant fraction of light. Nothing less than a shrunk down version of a dreadnaught main gun, the Adept creates a shocking explosion of blue-shifted light and a terrifyingly loud sonic boom when it fires, and only powerful biotic stabilizers and powered armor allow it to be fired without sending the wielder flying. The Royal Paladins wear these weapons on their power-armored battle suits, allowing them to bring down light fighters and crush enemy armor like tin cans. Nothing, I repeat, nothing this side of a light cruiser is going to repel a half-kilo slug going at .05 of light-speed, not a gunship, not a building, not even a damned tank. Thankfully, the weapon has only a few dozen shots, and requires a charge time between blasts.

_Asari warp swords:_ The first time we saw these, we thought someone was playing a joke on us. The asari version of a goddamned lightsaber, indeed. These weapons are composed of phase-compressed, highly carbonized plasma-forged steel, coated in a magnetically charged coating of transparent aluminum crystal, and ground down to an monomolecular edge. That alone would be bad enough, as the swords are unbreakable without applying tons of force and can cut through most materials with a single swipe. But the reason for their unnatural toughness is that the asari have filled the inside of each blade with finely dispersed eezo, allowing them to channel biotic warp fields through the blade, engulfing the sword in warp energies. I can't overestimate how lethal this kind of weaponry is. I know we've played around with monomolecular weapons, but these swords cut a krogan clean in half with a single blow. The good news is that they are rare, ruinously expensive, and require decades of training to use one. An inexperienced user will melt the blade, or worse, over charge it and make it explode into a cloud of burning, warp charged, mono-edged fragments. The last time that happened it killed six hundred asari.

Asari armor tends to be light, non-ferrous (magnetism interferes with their natural biotics) and with a free range of motion. It also tends to emphasize their form, with leather analogues hugging the chest and rear. Asari rarely wear heavier armor, and when they do it is very heavy indeed, often powered by myomer bundles to augment their strength. On the whole, however, since most asari prefer to rely on their natural biotics for defense, armor is seen as as matter more of style than protection.

There are no longer any real asari armor makers, as once they began trading with salarians, the salarian craze with impenetrable, flexible armor showed up asari work as inferior. As such, most of the armor worn by asari these days is actually produced by Aegohr Manufactory, the premier salarian armor and weapons corporation who also supplies the STG. However, the Asari Republic recently signed contracts with Jormangund Technologies of Earth to provide modified Crisis and Hazard suits for asari militia and the Guard.

The only 'native' asari armor made are the suits of of the Royal Paladins. These battlesuits are handcrafted by the Steelshape Clans, and customized for each generation who wears them. The suits are staggeringly expensive, crafted in the same method as Silaris Armor and warp swords, and even House T'Armal, worth tens of billions of credits, can only afford about five of them, with most Houses having only one.


	11. Chapter 11 - Asari Figures of Note

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

To the Three:

Thankfully, my assignment in asari space is at an end, as we have completed all the tasks assigned. The compilation of important figures required a great deal of interactions – I'm not sure that our cover story fooled some of the matriarchs we came in contact with, but the brilliant linguistic ability of Agent Lawson came in great use in helping us decipher the asari news stories and tabloids. (I remain vastly amused at the idea that the Terran Enquirer and the Sun are both widely read in asari space. It almost humanizes the asari at times, until you take a closer look at the tramps.)

Also, the assistance of Matriarch Trellani was invaluable and far-reaching. Her disdain for her own kind nearly matches my own, and interviewing her lead to some concepts and points I think will follow this section. Trellani pointed out that the greater the power an asari wields the less she is inclined to use it, and that most become paralyzed by the ever-shifting flows of intrigue and influence in asari culture.

Our investigations touched on a couple of very troubling figures, including one of the most terrifying aliens I've ever met or hope to meet, and I've been mugged by krogan.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **It is not in my mind to ask questions that cannot be answered. That is the soul standing upon the crossroad of vacillation. You search for wisdom, but achieve only a stasis of will.

* * *

**Notable Asari :**

The asari are strangely picky about their mode of address. A maiden is usually referred to only by her first name, clan or family references are rare. Clanless family names are usually the first name of the bloodline they come from, while Clans have no last name, only referring to their Clan. Matriarchs are almost always referred to as Matriarch first name, and to skip the Matriarch is a severe faux pas unless you are friends.

The Thirty are even more haughty. The rough translation of the prefix of asari members of the Thirty is "Her Grace", and this is a formal title used only in announcements. A reference to their title – Queen or Princess – is only required in formal introductions. Even so, it's best to be very polite around the Thirty. Most are insufferable.

* * *

**Her Grace, High Matriarch and Queen Thana T'Armal : **without a doubt the single most powerful being in the galaxy, Thana T'Armal rules House T'Armal and most of Thessia. Her personal fortune, not even counting the assets of her House, is in the low tens of billions, and her personal fleet is larger than a SA squadron. Thana is a regal, ancient figure, over 1300 years old now, but showing no signs of age or slowing down. Boasting nine children and over twenty grandchildren, she is the closest thing to a ruler the asari species has. Unlike most asari, she is not arrogant, dismissive, or absorbed in social maneuvering. These are beneath her. A former lunar high priestess of Athame as well as an asari commando in her youth, Thana now spends most of her time administering her business holdings and training her successors.

The queen plays politics only on the highest level, with the Citadel Council or directly with the rulers of other races. She is an avid patron of the arts, sponsoring thousands of artists, musicians, poets, and other creatives from her own pocket, as well as amassing a private museum of cultural artifacts conservatively valued at six billion credits. She travels under extremely heavy guard and her bodyguard consists of two Royal Paladins, a Justicar who has sworn a life long oath of obedience, and two cybernetically augmented krogan she raised from birth.

It is extremely difficult to determine the motivations and goals of such a creature. She seems to honestly believe asari should dominate, but not out of racial pride but mere understanding that the asari military, economy, and population are supreme in Council Space. Our best political projections suggest she's waiting for humanity to make a move before deciding whether to back us or backstab us.

* * *

**Her Grace, High Matriarch Uressa T'Shora : **There is a belief that Uressa is the most beautiful asari who has ever lived, and it is hard to debate this. Even Agent Galis, who hates asari more than anyone I know, was struck stuttering and wide-eyed upon seeing her in person. Taller than every other asari I have met, she is blindingly beautiful, voluptuous, and graceful. Her voice is sweet and gentle, calming, almost hypnotic, and she seems capable of putting even the most aggressive at ease. She is a brilliant musician, has written a dozen books of poetry, and painted _Misery In Joy, _a painting that has reduced krogan to tears. Educated, polite, and interested in alien cultures, she dresses demurely and eschews the pomp and regalia most of the Thirty embraces.

By all indications, nearly all asari revere her, calling her Athame returned, a title she embarassedly denies with great force. Uressa T'Shora focuses her efforts on expanding medical care and outreach to the Clanless, building schools, touring disaster sites, and funding charity efforts, while the rest of her House is obsessed with making money and ever more debauched parties. Uressa was the deciding vote on the Council of Matriarchs to dispatch the Asari Fleet to stop the First Contact War, and was the only house Leader to ever tour Earth. She does not seem very asari like to me, to be honest.

Unlike the Queen of the T'Armal, Uressa's only goals are aiding others, particularly the helpless. She was horrified to see the homeless of Earth's arcologies, and has dropped a good billion in credits on building shelters and even arcology expansions in New York and Calcutta, donating the money and offering asari Clan assistance where plausible. She is a quietly firm believer in siari, but feels it only should apply to the asari people, and that each race must find it's own path to unity, not merely hobble themselves by mimicking the asari.

Despite myself, I can't help but admire her. Trellani implies Uressa is uncommon among asari, a truly noble soul, and she may be right. She is the only figure among the Thirty that seems to be free of the corrupted nature of asari, as she quietly bonded with her childhood sweetheart and does not play the usual sexualized games of her species. I am not sure what to make of her, but despite my admiration, something feels off. She's too perfect, too … everything. I would recommend closer investigation.

* * *

**Her Grace, Princess Shaltha T'Vaan : **House T'Vaan is still reeling from the death of Matriarch Ynnal some six months ago, and they have not confirmed Princess Shaltha as High Matriarch, but it is only a matter of time. Shaltha is a quintessential asari, obsessed with social status, arrogant, haughty, and wasting her time and energy more on maneuvering House T'Vaan in murky political games than anything else. A narrow-faced asari of rather plain looks, she was a commando in her youth and a friend of Jona Sederis from childhood. A vicious shrew of an asari, the deaths of two of her cousins in strange accidents has many wondering if she is behind their deaths to cement her rule.

Shaltha is a cool political player and is rapidly maneuvering through companies on Illum to boost her wealth and portfolio. She is just as rampantly sexualized as most asari, with a bewildering menagerie of lovers that changes weekly and includes the most fucked up matches I've seen, including a pair of hanar twins, (don't ask) , krogan (please don't ask), and even elcor (really, don't ask). She's a thrill seeker, often participating in aircar races and biotic fighting exhibitions. Hardly a dignified figure, she has no real goals that can be perceived. Her only redeeming feature is her curious rejection of siari and the worship of Athame – amusingly, she's taken up an obscure turian ancestral honor religion, one that she thinks can link her with the 'spirit of Athame'.

* * *

**Clan Matriarch Thessial, Clan Steelshape : **Thessial is a salarian stuck inside an asari body, it seems. Rambling, constantly inventing and researching, disorganized and disheveled, Thessial doubles as the asari ambassador to Sur'Kesh and is a great favorite among the salarians. Her mind is brilliant, with a staggering thirty four hundred patents to her name, among them vectored mass effect gunships and the humble and ubiquitous datapad. Her most famous invention however, the omni-tool, cements her as a genius among geniuses. Thessial technically leads Clan Steelshape, but in practice, her subordinates do most of the organizing. Thessial's only weakness is her hunger for reckless, drug-crazed orgies with maidens or (more recently) human women, these binges seemingly acting to reset her mind and drive her onto new inventions. Over nine hundred years old now, she is one of the very rare asari to continue to have children throughout her life – she has 'fathered' over sixty children and given birth to twenty eight more, and is probably the only asari to have children by a salarian dalatrass. Her rail-thin, slim figure is hardly beautiful but her intensity and personality are overwhelming.

Thessial is also curious in that she practices miari, a mix of siari, aspects of Zen Buddism, salarian circle worship and nature worship. Thessial has, over the past decade, become increasingly focused on humanity, and most of her recent investments have been in human corporations. She has a minority stake in the Sirta Foundation, and has been working with variants of medigel that will incorporate asari regenerative functions to attempt to make the gel capable of healing almost any injury.

Thessial is the devoted friend of more than one salarian dalatrass, keeps an estate on Sur'Kesh itself, and is the unofficial pinup girl of the STG, apparently. More than one observer has noted the utter and complete failure of many industrial espionage attempts against Clan Steelshape can be traced back to affectionate STG interference. A common joke is that if she ever decided to run for High Dalatrass of the Salarian Union she'd probably win by a landslide.

* * *

**Matriarch Lidanya T'Armal : **Commanding officer of the Destiny Ascension, Lidanya began life as a mere clanless orphan, making a hand to mouth existence selling herself to turians visiting Thessia. She managed to convince one such turian to train her how to fight and learned some turian biotics, before enlisting in the salarian mercenary band Forethought to pick up info-war tactics. By the time she was 200, she was a veteran mercenary, and returned home to join the asari military. Legendary for clearing her status to master in one day, and then immediately applying to the Republican Guard, she made her name in the so-called "Second Krogan Rebellions", when krogan mercenaries attempted to take the asari colony of Urana. She defeated a krogan warlord in biotic hand-to-hand combat, before killing the brute with his own hammer. She left the military at around 400, appealing to join Clan Steelshape and learn to be a master-crafter, spending a century learning to build and craft the famed asari warp swords.

Lidanya had a plan, carefully using her great beauty, skills, and wide range of allies to rise upwards in society. By the time she was 600, she'd had children with three lesser House members in Family T'Armala, who sponsored her into the Family. She then gifted then Princess Thana T'Armal with a magnificent warp sword, six feet long but with mass effect lighteners built into the hilt, and a special diamond-matrix alloy that allowed the destructive force of a singularity to be channeled through the blade. Called _Tsunami_, the blade was probably worth twenty million credits, and was given to the Princess just before her ascension to High Matriarch.

Lidanya was adopted into House T'Armal and continued to rise, spending a century as an asari commando and even several decades back in the asari military as House Advisor for their dreadnaught captains. When the commander of the Destiny Ascension died of infections related to off-duty injuries, the struggle for the prestigious position was fierce, but Lidanya had the backing not only of House T'Armal, but Clan Steelshape, several military units, and a host of other influential matriarchs.

Lidanya is considered 'proof' of the asari democracy and that it's social system is truly fluid. Now nearly eleven hundred years old, Lidanya has worked hard to master naval combat tactics and is considered a masterful admiral and administrator. Working closely with the Citadel Council, there are rumors she has her eye on moving into the position of asari ambassador one day. Of course, there are also rumors that if Princess Nathesia doesn't meet the critical eye of Queen Thana, it might be that Lidanya would be the next High Matriarch.

* * *

**Citadel Councilor Tevos T'Sael: ** a slimy woman, Tevos is the asari Citadel Council member, and the pivotal swing vote between the salarians and the turians. Calm and usually gentle in speech and manner, she strives to present an image of grace and wisdom, but she is rather average looking and is not particularly eloquent. Tevos's greatest strength is the backing of her network of friends and lovers, boasting contacts among literally every house of the Thirty and many Clan contacts as well as alien lovers. She seemingly sees nothing wrong with conducting diplomacy on her back, and rarely offers initiatives to the Council, instead seeking to twist whatever proposals arise to the asari advantage.

We have no real insights as to her goals (aside from banging anything that moves), but rumor states she is not really the one in charge, and that Irrissa Te'Shora calls the shots. This would not be that surprising, as T'Sael is a small Guardian House whose fortunes have waned in the past few centuries, and they have not really gained any advantage from having Tevos as Councilor. It's quite possible that Tevos is nothing more than the grasping hedonist she seems, and in analysis of previous Councilors, it's more than likely that this is deliberate and that EVERY Councilor is actually the cats paw of the associated ambassador.

Rumors link her to Aria T'Loak, but , then again, they also link her to Elvis, Sharblu and Aish Ashland, so go figure.

* * *

**Asari Ambassador Irrissa Te'Shora: **The more public face of the asari government, Irrissa is a frequent verbal sparring partner with Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani of Westerlund News, and is a common guest on her news segments. She is what passes for a human specialist among the asari, and is surprisingly blunt in her views. She sees humans as needing guidance and protection, and sees the asari as the natural and correct providers of such. For all her blinding arrogance, however, I will grudgingly admit that she seems to actually respect human culture, and has worked to introduce aspects of it to asari worlds to stir up critical thinking and reflection. Her viewpoint on Cerberus is equally shocking, as she is the only asari to publicly admit, in her own words, "The only difference humans and aliens is the humans are honest enough to put their black-ops groups in the public eye." Even so, she is hardly an ally and remains convinced of asari superiority.

Irrissa is a deft political operator, eschewing the normal asari methods of using sex to get her way in favor of old fashioned glad-handling and an amusing skill at charming children of all races. She is an amateur astronomer and often pushes projects to the Skywatch Clans, who in turn are useful in providing her with investment insights into new technologies.

Rumor has it she is romantically involved with Khalisah al-Jilani , which would be .. curious , given al-Jiliani's on-air attitude towards her.

* * *

**Matriarch Serisa T'Suon : **This ancient hag is the master of the Lodges of Hunt on Thessia, a group of informal training and conditioning groups that produce the feared asari commandos. One of the oldest asari known to history, currently over fifteen hundred years old, Serisa is still active and vital, often training commandos herself. Ancient enough to remember the times BEFORE the Krogan wars, she is bitterly conservative and hates modern asari culture. We're not even sure if this creature is aware humans exist yet, as she has not left the vast hunting preserves on Thessia in over six centuries. By all accounts, the Matriarch is more focused on simply ensuring the continuance of the commando as the premier aspect of asari military culture than any political agenda, and doesn't even bother to engage in sexual contact any longer. Pictures of her show an average looking asari woman, with thin angry features and facial markings so thick they cover her entire face, one for each enemy she's killed. Serisa is the wielder, in ritual occurrences that happen once a century, of the Sword and Shield of Athame, ancient artifacts supposedly granting mystical powers to their wielders. We managed to get our hands on some photos of these artifacts in the last Showing, and we don't recognize the metal used for the objects, but one thing is very clear – that sword wasn't designed for an asari hand.

* * *

**Justicar Mistress Layana : **the head of the Justicar Order, this icy woman is chilling to behold. Scarred by plasma fires so intense even asari regeneration didn't heal it, her left eye is gone, replaced with an iron patch screwed directly into her skull. Layana has killed well over ten thousand criminals and monsters in her life, including one of her own children, at least a dozen rogue ardat-yakshi, a yahg, and not one but two wild thresher maws. On foot.

Over twelve hundred, she is emotionless and unyielding, having lost two bondmates to batarian slavers before joining the order. On her word, no batarian is allowed with her sight or she will kill them, and she has warned that if the Batarian Hegemony raids another asari world she will kill their entire leadership. The fact that there haven't been any known raids on asari worlds in the past sixty years, when she uttered that threat, should remind everyone that even the arrogant batarians fear this woman. The asari have built her into a myth, but there is ancient combat footage of her fighting pirates on Kantah who ambushed her three hundred years ago, and it is terrifying to watch – she crushed a gunship out of the sky with her biotics while fending off a dozen attackers with insulting ease, armed only with a single pistol and dressed in a bathrobe. There is a pirate bounty on her head offered by the Blood Pack of a hundred million credits that, to the best of our knowledge, not a single fool has even TRIED to collect.

If this hatchet-faced asari has a 'plan' or a 'goal', it probably involves smashing something or someone to paste. Layana has no investments and does not participate in asari culture to any real degree. Her only real interaction with others is an on again, off again relationship of some kind with the ancient krogan warlord, Ganar Okeer. It is not romantic or sexual, the two appear to have a highly ritualized unarmed combat once a century. The significance and meaning of this is currently unknown, but given Okeer's extremely long and sinister history, it's probably nothing good.

* * *

"**Midnight's Kiss" : **The name refers to a certain asari sex act, which I have no intention of detailing. The title refers to a brilliant asari thief and assassin, believed to be an ardat-yakshi who has killed six Justicars and killed a pair of Spectres some five hundred years ago. Our intelligence on the ardat-yakshi is sketchy – only a tiny handful are known to exist, and most of them bury themselves under layers of deception and fake names. Midnight's Kiss, however, is unique, as careful peeling back of rumors and assistance from Matriarch Trellani indicates the ardat-yakshi in question was once actually some kind of royal executioner! The rumors are very hushed, but if the intelligence is true, Midnight's Kiss used to be the ultimate sanction, and was once the leader of the mysterious Asari Night-wind – ardat-yakshi, conditioned with mind controls and cortex bombs. How she slipped free is a matter of myth, but now she is on her own, and, according to Trellani, working with the Shadow Broker.

Midnight's Kiss is implicated in a string of thefts and deaths, most of which seem to be targeting the Thirty who have opposed shifts in Asari culture, as well as the Clans and the siari and Athame movements. Trellani believes that Midnight's Kiss may have uncovered the same shattering truths she did, and is now acting out to disrupt the asari unity and reveal the truth. We made several attempts to make contact with her, but all were rebuffed – non-violently. The last one got a brief response – "let humans tend to their own flock, I am busy with mine". We will defer further action to your response to this strange missive.

* * *

**Matriarch Trellani, Clan Moondance : **We are all of course familiar with Matriarch Trellani, as she has been one of the few aliens who have proven their worth to humanity. Trellani's past is known to us, she was once a ranking priestess in the Moondance Clan, the religious practitioners of siari. As she rose through their ranks, she discovered disturbing intelligence indicating the asari were nothing more than Prothean test subjects. She reached out to human elements at the Mars Archive to try to confirm this, but of course fell afoul of the Manswell Doctrine's wise containment of any kind of information like that. But Cerberus reached out to her, and when she confirmed the truth of her revelations, she severed all contact with her own kind.

We have watched Trellani carefully, and we can find no sign she is anything but what she claims. It's possible she's no longer entirely sane, as the Council of Matriarchs responded harshly to her claims on the extranet, slaughtering her entire family and killing several close allies and her bondmate. Such casual cruelty for merely expressing the truth is, of course, why humanity must defend itself.

Many Cerberus operatives are uneasy working with Trellani, but for her part she is rather laid back and does not have a superiority complex like so many asari. In asari circles, Trellani is hated widely, but her public pronouncements have shaken some asari's faith in the precepts of siari and asari history.

Trellani has been very helpful in making sense of some of asari culture and history, and recent events among the asari have proven her dire predictions about the course of asari culture very correct. She fears that in any real conflict, the asari will simply be paralyzed by indecision and social maneuvering, and that they are so convinced of their own correctness that they will eventually corrupt and destroy other alien societies.

Trellani's greatest assistance, however, has been in identifying the hallmarks of the idiotic biotic supremacy cults that matriarchs have begun to craft in human space. Her training as a priestess gives us great insight in countering siari babble, and her ability to link and ensure the sincerity of certain Agents in risky assignments can't be duplicated by any other method.

We have first hand evidence of Trellani's allegiance to Cerberus and her combat ability, as it was her attack on the Night-wind who assaulted our research base that saved my life, and that of Dr. Nielson-Kahn and Agent Lawson as well. She was over-matched by the Night-wind but was able to put her warp sword to wicked effect, and severely wounded three of the assassins.

* * *

**Lunar Priestess Matriarch Benezia T'Soni: **recent events have refocused a great deal of attention onto this mysterious woman, but even if she was not involved with Saren we would have done a workup on her. Benezia was the Priestess of the Moon, one of two of the highest figures in the worship of Athame. As House Matriarch of House T'Soni, she also had vast wealth and influence. As CEO of Binary Helix, her business influence and research into human and asari genomic links was both far-reaching and disturbing. As the leader of the Triuna Siari movement, a political action group with links to those filthy alien lovers in Northstar, she was the leader of a charismatic cult movement implying humanity should let itself be lead by and dominated by the asari, with humanity as children and asari as caring mothers.

Her background is remarkable – the older of two sisters, Benezia sacrificed her youth in the service of Athame, leaving only to join the ranks of the commandos when she was a matron. After this she began dabbling both mystical cults and business ventures, and with House Devir, renovated the aging city and sagging fortunes of the City of Armali, revitalizing it's Clans and being instrumental in the formation of the Armali Council corporation.

Sometime after an acrimonious split from her bondmate, however, Benezia began to change. She was a known associate of Desolas Arterius, and had contacts with Saren twenty years ago. Benezia became cold and focused, moving further and further into business activities and founding a wide array of charismatic cults. She resigned her position as Priestess of the Sun in 2175, but political scandals force her to return to the role in 2180.

Given the security around the Temple of Athame, her use of House Commandos in defense of her properties, and the many security precautions she took with Binary Helix, her movements and motivations were hard to discern. We do know she probably started a relationship with Saren of a more serious nature in the 2170s and that by 2180 they were bondmates.

Benezia is **extremely **dangerous. As a commando she was lethal even among that group, and has trained over a hundred commandos in her day. As a war priestess, she has devastating biotic abilities unmatched by lesser asari. As the House Matriarch of House T'Soni, she has access to (and by our intel, probably took with her) the House's suit of Royal Paladin armor, and the house warp sword.

Worse, Benezia's cult movements were popular both in asari space and in human space, and it's possible even now she has a network of agents reporting events to her that are hard to root out.

We have only fragmentary reports on her house and family. She had one child, a pureblood, Dr. Liara T'Soni, who as you know is serving with Commander Shepard currently. Her bondmate, a Matriarch Aethyta, disappeared from popular society nearly a century ago and hasn't resurfaced. A good third of the family left with her after the split, the remainder have fallen onto hard times as Benezia took 90% of the House assets with her when she fled to Saren's side.

* * *

**Solar Priestess Thana Vathan : **Benezia's counterpart, the Priestess of the Sun is a highly visible figure who has never liked the turians and is mostly focused on asari society. A vicious warrior who spent four hundred years as a Justicar before retiring from the Order with her tasks complete, she took up the worship of Athame with a militant eye, and has been instrumental in growing the church in recent years. Thana preferred to let Benezia handle the political and economic policies of the Church, instead focusing on preaching and swaying converts through her titanic level of combat prowess and feats of biotic might. She is more than a little arrogant, a figure I liken most closely to P. , and I have my doubts about her religious devotion. She is, very simply, in love with attention, and her antics have grown more desperate in the wake of Benezia's actions. For all her frivolity, however, she is very serious when it comes to security, and Athame's temples have gone even deeper into lockdown since Benezia joined Saren. She is almost obscenely muscled, rippling with power, and usually parades around stark naked, dancing under the sun and crying out the glory of Athame.

Her motivations and goals remain a mystery. Certainly she is focused on growing the Church, but unlike Benezia, she has no personal investments, no real wealth, and only faint connections to her House. She is charismatic but inept at politics, and despite her wanton and lewd appearance has only ever maintained a pair of lovers, one a salarian with which she had children, and her bondmate, an asari lesser priestess.

Her combat ability transcends amazing, bordering on the flatly ridiculous. She once defeated an entire raiding band of batarians with nothing more than her sword, cutting apart two armored vehicles and using kanquess to leap to their airship and carve it to pieces in midair, literally dodging ground fire and moving so fast the video blurs. She has faced down (and defeated, usually in seconds) rogue ardat-yakshi, krogan warlords, turian separatists, and even asari criminals that the Justicars couldn't bring in.

Much like Benezia, Thana is also extremely dangerous. She is not the House Matriarch, but is it's Royal Champion, giving her access to a suit of the royal paladin armor and other such gear. While she rarely uses anything but her warp sword, she spent over_ four centuries _as a Justicar, and and probably more as a commando in her youth. Her biotic barriers are strong enough that she can bounce light cannon fire from a Mako – _do_ _not underestimate_ _her_.

* * *

**Siara Grace Matriarch Nelanya : **the so-called "Living Power", the Grace is the leader of the siari religious movement, if it could be said to have one. Her origin is rather humble, an orphaned clanless woman, she claims she felt the call of unity as a child and has spent her life preaching it's strictures, freedoms, and tenets. A true fanatic, she eschews all forms of violence and is constantly calling for ever greater unity not just among asari but all life forms. While her message is tritely revolting, her biotic power is anomalous – she rivals the strongest Justicars in her abilities, bizarre given her clanless background. A small asari of average features and a hesitant manner of speaking, she currently acts as a sort of goodwill ambassador to various races, and is conducting a pilgrimage to visit the home worlds of every race to share siari with them. I hope the batarians have fun with that.

The Grace is well known at charity functions and other such events, using them to springboard her preaching. A frequent ally of Uressa T'Shora, she seems (key word, tricky phrase) to be fairly sincere in her efforts to alleviate suffering. That being said, quite unlike Uressa, she is very quick to to accrue the financial benefits of such displays. She also writes books and lectures frequently, charging huge fees to do so, and her home on Illum is palatial.

* * *

**The Consort Sha'ira : **Nothing else quite exemplifies the nature of asari whoredom like Sha'ira. A normals society would not make a folk hero out of a prostitute, much less a prostitute who doubles as a spy and pimp, but that's the asari for you. Sha'ira, who styles herself as the Consort (ha!), operates out of the Citadel in a vast complex gifted to her by a besotted admirer two centuries ago. The Consort entertains influential guests, offering poetic 'gifts of words' and political insight. By linking and melding with every damned politician on the Citadel, she has amassed tremendous insight into politics and has secrets even the Shadow Broker would probably kill for. She also has thousands of allies, giving her enormous reach and power. Despite this, she's still a jumped up, clanless whore, and the Thirty laugh themselves silly at her when she makes an attempt to enter their rarefied level of influence. The fact that she has the nerve to imply her services are tied to the siari religion really brings it all home, how despicable and corrupted these aliens are.

Trellani (displaying exactly why she's superior to most of her kin) is utterly dismissive of the woman, suggesting that the only people who fall for her act are rarely the true movers and shakers of society, and that anyone with sense is not going to meld with her or any of her sluts. She has started accepting turian and human females into the ranks of her previously all asari band of followers, which given their lack of ability to meld implies she's either trying to really branch out into full-on prostitution or is actually believing her own bullshit about being a poetic philosopher of siari love or whatever such babble justifies it in her mind.

* * *

**Matriarch Jona Sederis, Umbral Queen of the Eclipse : **There's no real nice way to put this, Jona Sederis is completely insane. Once a powerful commando, she was driven mad by the death of her bondmate and daughter in a botched pirate raid on her home world. Having bonded at a very young age, right out of maidenhood, she was not mentally tough enough to really understand what had occurred. Jona went on to found a mercenary group to hunt down the pirates, and along the way, picked up increasing numbers of clanless huntresses and bitter matrons tired of service to the state. Thus, the Eclipse mercenary company was born.

Jona Sederis has built the company up brilliantly, incorporating all races while lacing it's ranks and structure with mystical overtones. While no one can deny her biotic power and brutality in combat (the krogan even have a song about her), the woman is not stable, and has murdered her own associates more than once. Eclipse is now a popular destination for rebellious maidens to join up with, and the wealth and power she has acquired has gone to her head. She styles herself "the Umbral Queen" and considers herself the House Matriarch of "house Sederis", a made-up family comprised of her many children.

Sederis may be crazy, but she serves as a useful outlet for asari outcasts and malcontents who would disrupt the unity of asari society, so thus far the Thirty have tolerated her brutality and outbursts. As long as she doesn't hurt asari interests, she'll be tolerated, much to the disgust of the Justicar Order, who have been grimly waiting for their chance to crush her skull for centuries now. They only reason they haven't acted is that Sederis hates ardat-yakshi and has killed or captured six over the years, which implies she's not so crazy as to be completely gone off her nut.

* * *

**Her Grace, Princess Aleena T'Armal, Aria T'Loak, Pirate Queen of Omega : **Of all the asari on this list, none are more dangerous, more lethal, more cunning, and more amoral than Aria T'Loak. Our investigation into her past cost us a dozen agents, but we got lucky and discovered exactly why the Asari Republic has never acted against this legendary rogue.

Aria T'Loak (the last name is not even a family name, it literally means "of no House") was born as Aleena T'Armal, the eldest daughter of Thana T'Armal. In her youth she was legendary for her biotic strength and charm, her beauty rivaling that of Uressa T'Shora. She gave herself over to training to be a priestess, isolating herself from other asari and becoming something of recluse, and then began working with the Temple of Athame to aid the poor and build shelters and medical centers for clanless in the cities of Thessia.

But something happened that changed her life forever. Aleena had a daughter, a dangerous and unexpected result for a maiden, only possible by dint of her overwhelming biotic strength. The father was, unexpectedly, another asari, and even more unexpectedly, a clanless. Such things were simply not done – children were either links to other Houses, on that rare occasion where such a thing was needed, or were with influential aliens, not gutter trash. Aleena was ordered to have an abortion.

She refused, and the ruthless nature of her mother came out, planning to imprison her daughter and her lover and hush the whole thing up. But the act was botched, in the raid her bondmate was killed, the shock driving Aleena nearly mad. She managed to fight her way out of the T'Armal complex and off-planet, but was wounded and miscarried in the escape.

This was made aware to us by finding (based on leads provided to us by, amusingly, mislead STG teams who thought we were Alliance Intel working to counter Aria) an old krogan who served as a house bodyguard at the time. He informed us that Aleena was definitely the same woman as Aria T'Loak, and that, given how long ago it was and how few people knew Aleena at the time.

We know very little of what she did during her middle years. We know at one point she was definitely a commando, an entry for one "Aleema, of no clan or house" was found in records at Lodge of Four Stars in southern Thessia. On the run from her House, Aleena must have been very skilled at manipulation and misdirection to operate in a lodge four hundred miles from her estates with a single letter changed in her name.

At some point about half a century ago, Aleena vanished. Rumors suggest she met her end on a space station fighting mercenary krogan forces. It was some fifty years later that "Aria T'Loak" emerged and within half a century had conquered Omega.

It seems inconceivable that the Thirty did not recognize Aria as Aleena, and indeed, there are hints that the Thirty sent assassins and other measures to attempt to stop Aria, but she destroyed them all. According to Trellani, Aria sent an ultimatum to the Council of Matriarchs, warning them that if they continued to harass her she would unveil information from "the Temple" that would shatter asari society. At that point, the attacks stopped.

For Aria to have stood off the Thirty implies she knows something incredibly damaging. Unfortunately, we have little to no way to gather what that intel might be. Aria is a very strong biotic, with skills that are roughly on par with a war priestess, sans biotic sword. She has a wide control of Omega, with innumerable spies and informers, and is considered the premier warlord in the Terminus, with all of Omega and a dozen independent or pirate worlds answering to her directly. The Omega fleet is a bit dated and somewhat mismatched, but has well over five hundred ships and probably triple or even quadruple that would answer her call to war, making her effective strength in ship counts if not weight nearly equal to the Systems Alliance!

Aria has an intelligence network nearly as good as ours, and does regular business with the Shadow Broker. Among her many, many allies are at least two krogan warlords, several STG specialists, and dozens of asari mercenary leaders.

Aria ultimate goal appears to be nothing less than building the Terminus into a nation-state of it's own, capable of containing the expansion of the Citadel races. Omega's vast eezo reserves give her staggering wealth, and her cult of commandos trained by her gives her an advantage in infiltration and counter-espionage – all are basically trained courtesans and prostitutes, more than capable of hiding their true capabilities under a layer of sensual innocence until they can strike.

Aria has repeatedly been linked to Councilor Tevos, but we have no evidence either way of this being true, and in any case, Aria almost never leaves Omega, which she governs (in true tawdry asari fashion) from a goddamned strip club. If Matriarch Lidanya is a measure of the fluidity of asari society, Aria is a sobering reminder of the capability of one of the Thirty when driven to extremes.


	12. Chapter 12 - Trellani's Notes: Asari

**A/N: **_Thus ends the Asari section. I'm actually interested in feedback so far – it it too much detail or not enough? Should I focus on turians or salarians (or some other race) next? I can't finish the human history yet, as it has a few spoilers and will get done after some more OSABC updates. _

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

ALEXANDRIA-NINE-NINE-ALEPH – SUBSECTION TWO, PARTITION TWELVE

WARNING: CORRUPTED ROUTING

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE DENIED

SECONDARY UPLINK ACCEPTED

USER: TRELLANI

* * *

My lovely Jack,

I was amused by your private request for me to comment on the body of work your fanatical little doctor is putting together for you and your fellow travelers. The poor man was quite shaken with the death of Dr. Uraj , but that is what you get when you are fool enough to spin and dance in the webs of the Thirty, fear be upon their enemies.

I fear the rest of your compatriots dislike me – not that I care. I understand their anger and rage, their rejection of anything not of their species. One reason we asari cling so tightly to our blind seeking of unity and comfort in one another is we are all very afraid of the darkness beyond our warm seas and comforting forests. Our ancestors looked up at a sky we worshiped, only for it to split apart and rain death and calumnity upon us, our only comfort the warm bodies and open minds of our clans.

Humans never embraced one another as we asari have. You divide yourselves over the most inane of concepts, of invisible lines on maps, over pieces of cloth with designs, over imaginary 'nations' that can't be found by the naked eye. You derange your languages and cling to your quaint food dishes and curious clothing, as if the universe cared for such effrontery in the face of it's majesty. You tell yourselves that the amount of dye in your skin somehow determines your intelligence and personality.

You hate and burn so brightly because you fear, each of you, deep inside, that you are insignificant. Not for you a god that merely guides the dreamer into a deeper sleep, or a unity with all life. You have to have a God that is responsible for all things, knows all things, and grants immortality. You have to punish and reincarnate yourselves, or submit endlessly without relief in pursuit of a wisdom that sounds not that much different than siari when you shave away the fancy words.

No, Jack – your people hate aliens because you cannot stand the idea that you are not , indeed, superior. You are not as blind as my people are, who have no hate because we cannot even conceive of such a ridiculous concept that some race might be our equals, much less superiors.

I think some asari insight into some of the questions and issues your little doctor did not touch on are in order.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: ** – file error – not found – error 404c

* * *

Jack, your average asari is no powerful biotic warrior, mystical and wrapped in shimmering, body hugging silks. I am sure that is what the human ideal of my kind is , and I remain just as sure that such images are the exact public face the Thirty, grace unto their houses, place before you constantly.

But most of the clanless are but people, my friend. The average asari grows into a family that is almost always bifurcated, between asari culture and whatever the race of the father is. Salarians make poor fathers in most cases, distracted and unused to raising children, while turians delight in turning their blue daughters into tiny little soldiers. Krogan lovers are rare, but no one will spend more time , or show such unexpected gentleness, with a child as a krogan. A batarian is usually a brute, but those who were slaves are more gentle themselves, but they remain stern, unyielding and distant power figures.

Human fathers are often the best, be they male or female humans, as they can simply enjoy the growth and joy of a child's live. An average asari child knows nothing of the games of the Thirty, grace unto their houses, or the machinations of the Clans, or the smeared, unending dance of the agile wit that plays across asari culture. They are children, innocent and pure.

The average asari, then, is usually a mere worker. She provides for her child, loves her bondmate, and works to ensure their comfort and safety. If there are other asari nearby she is open with them, but in this modern age more and more asari turn away from the communal clan parenting of children and dote upon them personally.

Your average asari studied biotics in her long-ago youth, and maybe , if she was daring, used them for a few years when she ran with wilder sisters. But despite what Dr. Minsta thinks, most asari girls don't spent but a handful of years with that crowd. Few indeed are cruel and hard enough become a Sister of the Eclipse, who require you to kill another being in cold blood. To fully embrace such a life is to turn away from siari, to make it hard to ever come back into the fold.

Most will do a bit of dancing or mercenary work, then find work on the Citadel, Illum , the five colonies, or on Thessia. Secretaries and analysts, legal assistants, legates, medical workers, clerks and hostesses. Poor trembling Minsta would have you believe every asari girl is a hardened veteran. It is more akin to the dangers posed by a human who served two years in the military reserves as a clerk. They may remember a few things, but most is gone , and they have not the nerves or the mindset for battle.

The average asari votes diligently, with a firm belief that regardless of what happens, the Thirty, honor and peace upon them, will act in the best interests of all. She is not fool enough to believe she is important ; rather, she trusts that with enough grains of sand, even the ocean must stop it's surge. What point a large and powerful government which expends most of its efforts trying to coordinate that which is best handled by mere common sense?

Jack, the average asari is too wrappped up in her own life, in the joys of it, in the little things, to give much thought to humans, or the fate of the galaxy. Minsta's points may be correct in terms of the powerful of my race, but the average asari is just … a person. We are not all biotic witches, grim of eye and voluptuous of form, capable of magical feats of arms and sleeping with a legion of exhausted lovers out of sheer carnal hunger. They are just people, and if they are a bit given too much to pleasure and love to intrigue over little social clans or who is sleeping with who, what matter that to such as you?

* * *

Minsta dislikes our practice of siari, and finds our casual embrace of pleasure disturbing, as if it is somehow unclean or wrong. But how much of this is human views on sex, and not really our views? Are we to be judged, then, on humans and their practices, without judging in turn? A society of humans sees nothing wrong with letting billions starve, or for the masses to struggle to eat while the rich have palaces they do not even visit. You poison your own kind in the empty pursuit of wealth and influence, and then use said influence to oppress and control others, without even reaping gain for your selves. You prate about empty sexuality but are the first to sexualize every bit of advertising, news, fashion, even military service, and you denigrate females as weaker and frailer, mainly to serve the strong sexual urges of your males, whose genes bid them to spread their children among many mates, while females want to retain the father of their children for defense and aid.

One wonders where Minsta finds his moral compass at nights. (And who he fills his bed with). Asari sex with other asari is merely a sharing of sensations and pleasures. It is not the gross and frankly insipid insertion of body parts into other body parts, the splattering of fluids and diseases that every other species practices. It is a beautiful glimpse into the wonder of another being, a way to find and open your mind to concepts, memories, feelings you never experienced, and the warm glowing release that shivers both your frame and theirs is united.

We do not believe in Original Sin. Minsta's narrow-minded Christianity defeats his understanding of the meld and our focus on unity. The average asari may link shallowly with two or three friends, but not while she is bonded. Her life focuses on her children and her bond, her exploration...

Oh, how to make you understand? You with your devil-may-care belief in your invincibility, your optimistic hopes? Women are drawn to you like a moth to the flame, for your power, your calm, your iron determination, your looks.

But do you even enjoy it, I wonder, as asari do? Is all human sex guilt-ridden? Is it because every act can lead to children your kind rarely seems to want?

Can you understand the beauty of laying naked beneath the stars with someone so close to you that every breath is as one, to know and feel and exult in such closeness that it seems the very sky touches your skin, that your whole world is suffused with this glow? How can I explain the comfort from the ties that bind each asari to each other, and to others beyond, to see the joy of an impish young maiden in the ghost of an aging matriarch, and her smile as you discuss things neither you nor she ever lived?

I have turned away from the purposes to which our unity has been twisted, and the filthy black tide that spills from the worn stone steps of Athame's so-called temple, but siari is not some game of sex and titillation. You cannot understand , and Minsta should stop trying to do so. Siari is a feeling, a touch of something beyond the grasp of one or many minds. You would, I suppose, call it a gut feeling, a hunch. It is the unseen flicker of something , perceived by a million million asari memories throughout fifty thousand years. There is something beautiful and mystical there. I have no words for it, but I know it.

That being said , siari is not for humans, and shouldn't be perverted in such a fashion. I understand, in a way, where he comes from with his distaste. A human using sexuality to influence others would indeed be a whore, as the sex act for your kind is so much different than for us. No flower of a field of Thessian blue can thrive in Terra's green grasses or Sur'kesh's moss, and forcing such a mesh is exactly why your group is needed. There are those, I will admit, who have turned our glorious unity into a weapon, a tool. It is akin to shoveling snow with a famous painting, or cleaning a counter-top with the documents of a brilliant author from ages gone past.

* * *

Minsta's insights into our culture mostly on target, but some regarding the Clans are … skewed, at best. He sees the Clans as tribal throwbacks, when they are specialists, in a culture and world that now calls for each to be all things. There was a time when asari workmanship and ethics were all about pride, when a woodworker would spend six years merely finishing a table , every detail so utterly perfect that you couldn't even find a joined edge that didn't look natural. Now, we have fallen into the consumerist trap, that ease of convenience that is the mire of the extranet and free shipping. The Clans refuse to give up that core of patience that made asari what we became, that loving attention, when a mere sword, or the work of a stone-cutter, was an asari's very name and pride, her skills linked and passed to her descendants.

No human can or ever will surpass a Clan artesian, who has the memories of an eon of fine crafting in her mind. The pride of the asari Temple of the Moon, the Serration of Unspent Blood, is a warp sword over nine thousand years old, before we had plasma forges or fancy metals or nano-composited alloys. Made of nothing more than thin sheets of the purest silver and steel, banked in snow drifts, hammered and folded seven million times, quenched in volcanic ash and tempered in pure ocean water.

It took six hundred years to make one sword, Jack. One blade. A blade that was wrought so fine that when the Priestess of the Sun took it up it rivaled the very life giving orb in brightness, so sharp it would send razoring cascades of rainbows along it's edge with every movement. What human culture could expend such effort on a mere item? You are as mayflies. You forget your own history, your cultures melt and flow like taffy, and your memories are as water.

We do not forget, and we do not move on. We remember, and we build on what we know. That is our strength, Jack. That is what fools like Minsta fail to see, despite his genius and skill and wide education. He sees only what the Thirty allow, he sees the corruption, yes, the failure, yes..

But not the glory, not the pride, not the bitter, unyielding remembrance that has built us up. He sees those who lie to themselves, who turn their gaze to nothing more than existence, when our love and dreams are so much more rich, more moving, more keening in their grasping , hungering needs.

An asari poetess once spoke it best, I feel. I fear the translation does not rhyme, but you should get some sense of the emotions I speak of.

_Long days have slid past the vault of the sky_

_As sun and moon chase each hour across the blue of sea and shore_

_I long for the days of my life givers and life bringers _

_I am weary of toil and proud of the rings I bear on each arm_

_My daughters, straight and proud, carry my name and blood_

_My fine lovers are my supports when the nights grow cold_

_But under this vault of sky_

_I am alone, within myself, a multitude of those I know_

_My fingers touch air, but I am made of many_

_I have seen shores I will never walk upon_

_I have danced with smiling princesses I will never see_

_Lips have tasted mine that are long dead _

_I have chased the narhwan upon the bright waters in boats_

_though I love the mountains and have left them not once in my years_

_Now I am fading from this light, laying full upon the lucid blue of the waters_

_I can feel all of those in my life around me, the darkness of the moon_

_and the glory of the sun, burning through dark spaces to bring forth_

_Dawn? A light that I cannot comprehend. A face that is sweet and dear to me_

_My daughters kiss my ancient flesh, my bondmate wipes her tears from broken eyes_

_I am weary of toil and proud of the rings I bear on each arm_

_I will live on forever, in the minds of those who remain_

_and dance beneath midnight skies, thighs damp with the sea-mist upon the grass _

_I will soar under clear blue skies, in the minds of those who follow_

_Under this vault of sky_

_I am never alone, I am asari, I am one, I am all. _

If you can grasp that, Jack, you can grasp siari.

* * *

On a more practical note, having spoken my little piece... I want to touch on three things Dr. Minsta did not.

First, the biotic supremacist cults that rage across your world are indeed no natural evolution of siari, nor are they the hands of any but the Thirty, blessed be they. The Thirty , sharp are their swords, are not something I can explain, except perhaps to suggest that your kind would feel the same if Jesus Christ had children who to this day were the leaders of your nations. To gainsay them is –

Difficult.

Even cut off from my own people, by my own choice. Even knowing the Temple is hiding the truth and that those who call themselves the Thirty are frauds... my very soul rebels at speaking their title without one of the hundred blessings to follow. The Thirty. The Thirty.

Shift to non-verbal command by user. Recording begins of verbal output per Cerberus protocol six. Output suppressed to user interface

My mind moves under it's own power. My spirit gives me strength, my strength fuels my thoughts, my thoughts embody motion. My mind moves under it's own power.

Shift to verbal command by user. Recording begins of verbal input to datapad

I am no weak fool , and even my own mind rebels against casting imprecations against the Thirty. Suffice it to say that biotic supremacy is not something asari give much cause to think of, and that in humans it is a dark concept indeed. Your kind is naturally given to discrimination and self-sectioning. Skin color, the place you were born, what language you speak, what nation you hail from, what gender you prefer in bed – the divisions and separations in your culture drive one mad to ponder long upon. Biotics, feared and distrusted, used by the SA to check the ambitious and the proud, are the natural focus of hatred and rage.

I fear these biotic cults are not trying to infiltrate society so much as ensure your biotics are fearful of asari power. I have seen some of your better biotic students. A few of the would best me with ease, and a very few would give pause even to that crazed hag who styles herself Priestess of the Sun. But most of your kind are simply too weak to battle the best the asari have to offer. The Thirty –

Intolerable. _They _, rather, are disinclined to see humans develop further down the path of biotic mastery. And thus, I fear the L2 issues your early biotics had, using implant designs of asari make, were flawed on purpose. I fear the asari would prefer if human biotics were distrusted and ostracized, because it gives them an easy inroads to power. Not to hurt humanity, but to apply leverage.

Asari dismiss violence...but manipulation? To control without lifting a finger? That we admire. Destroy these cults wherever they appear and you will thwart whatever plan … _They _.. have put into place.

* * *

Secondly, Minsta's assessment of the military is far off the mark, although I understand his confusion. Asari do have officers, I assure you. But they are concealed and often in positions of safety. They wear no pins of rank and attend no war college, but they are known to you already. The matriarchy. Lesser, younger asari naturally defer to their elders, by blood and instinct and biology. We do not need to train leaders in a corps because each matriarch is already a leader by nature. Yet Minsta stares right past this obvious fact, because when he looks to see patterns, he is too bound by human concepts to understand what is right in his face.

This is the truth behind our military – any losses dire enough to kill off all the matriarchs in a force is usually devastating enough that no military force will be left alive in any condition to fight anyway. It is a common mistake, made by every race who comes against us. Few can identify a matriarch from a maiden at a distance, fewer still when everyone is in the same armor and wearing full face helms.

Because (despite knowing better) I love you above all others in this vile galaxy, I will share with you a little secret. The asari matriarch does not, despite what the rumors say, have larger breasts than a maiden, nor do we grow taller or shorter. The trick to picking out a matriarch from maidens is the way one holds themselves. Our skeletons are cartilage, and it stiffens over time. Look for those asari who move more slowly, who are careful when evading and who rely upon heavier armor – those are most likely your matriarchs.

Minsta's summary of our history was .. good. But he continues to wonder what lies inside Athame's temples. Shall I tell you, Jack? Of artifacts that predate any Prothean dig? Of swords of a metal we have identified as being of Insuannon make?

I am fairly sure, although I cannot prove it as I did not rise to the proper rank, that our temples are actually sites of Prothean technology, much akin to your Mars Archives. I have seen ancient paintings of Athame and her 'servants', and they are no asari, nor any being I have seen. I am almost certain that the Thirty , may honor trail their days, know of this, and keep it a secret, and it is the core of why our mass drives and certain aspects of our technology are so vastly beyond even those far smarter than us, such as the salarians.

Of proof, I have none. I can see you narrowing your eyes, inhaling on one of those vile cigarettes, smiling to yourself. I have no proof, but I know what is in my mind, and the reaction of the Council of Matriarchs to my simple questions – the vile murder of all I held dear – is proof enough for this old fool.

* * *

A final thought, Jack. I know there are those in your organization who are distrustful of me, or my motives, although you know them clearly. I do not hate Cerberus, even the vile acts that your Shadow Hand has committed on innocent asari do not change my beliefs on that. Your people are acting in the name of survival, and while I feel Minsta is too vitriolic (and anthropocentric) to understand some parts of why my people act how they do, his argument that the asari wish humanity to kneel at their feet is all too accurate. There are a few who mean well, and many who have no ill will towards your kind, but as I said, one cannot be anything but dismissive of the creatures who need pills , injections, and accidents to touch biotics, who die in the span of an asari youth, who burn so brightly and so briefly. It is akin to fearing the action of a pack of sheep. Your livelihood may depend on them, you may be outnumbered by them, the rams might, if they get upset and charge you, injure you badly if they surprise you, but they are not going to suddenly one day take over your home, or take away your guns and shear you in turn!

You are being herded, and while I find some of what Cerberus does to be distasteful, I cannot in good conscience say that other races do not do the same or worse. I stand by my words, at least humanity is brave enough to put it's terrorists in the public eye. The vile nature of the Night-wind (damn all ardat-yakshi) should be proof enough that we asari are far more monstrous than even your Emperor Ardiente could ever hope to be.

I find I miss your easy company , your smile, your hands and your deft touch on the skyball court. Minsta is becoming boring to talk to, and Agent Lawson hates me because I make her feel plain and small. Perhaps a few weeks on Bekenstein would be agreeable for you, while your team removes to their next assignment?

Know that I love you, even if you tell yourself you are beyond such things.

Trellani


	13. Chapter 13 - Author's Note and Shift

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

* * *

**A reaally long authors note: **

_I'm very pleased so far with the reaction to the asari. I apologize for not finishing the human history, but realized immediately that quite a bit of it would spoil things I have planned for OSABC, and had to put that part on hiatus. _

_There have been a lot of general questions about some of what has been written, and in general I'll probably end up addressing most of these via PM, but at least one I feel like I should address directly. Before I do that, I'd like to thank _Michael1110 _for the __**ridiculous**__ hard work he does on the recap reviews. These are needed for me to measure where chapters are hitting or missing, and if everything I'm trying to say is actually making any kind of coherent sense. _

_Also thanks to _Jaensa_, because figuring out how the hell asari reproduction would actually work was impossible until she told me about framing protein shells in some forms of Proterozoic life forms. _

_Finally, I appreciate all the feedback I have gotten – I've replied to some with PM's and some via email. I do take it all into account. About 70% to 75% of what is written by me is already kinda set down in note form, but a lot of it ends up being adjusted on the fly. If you have a particular theory, insight, or question about a given race's culture, let me know – I can take a stab or we can work together to figure it out. _

_Now, s__ome people are concerned about the relative strength of humanity vis a vis the asari, in that the asari are seemingly much stronger in the Premiseverse than in stock ME. That is true – the asari are about five to six times stronger , I'd say. And by comparison, the turians are about half as strong as in stock ME, and the System's Alliance is nearly twice as strong by weight of ships and soldiers. _

_But I feel the issue is more of "humanity should be equal to the other races". I simply can't buy that, and it's something that always bothered me so much about stock ME. _

_Let me get this straight, the asari have literally THOUSANDS of years on us, along with a beacon and being handcrafted by the Protheans, and yet humanity's technology is up to par with theirs to the point in less than 30 years, to the point that when ME3 rolls around the asari are helpless against the Reapers?_

_It makes for good story, but that sort of progression doesn't hold together logically, and there's no point in rewriting the whole thing in an AU if you're just gonna trope it all out and rely on Rule of Cool to explain away everything. _

_Yes, if you were to match the asari up against the humans in a straight fight, humanity would lose it's ass off. If you matched the rest of Citadel Space against the asari I'm not sure who would win, but I wouldn't bet against the asari. That is how it should be. In the Premiseverse, it's one of the key drivers of why everything is so nasty – the top dogs want to stay there, and the under-dogs are willing to use any trick they can to equal the odds. _

_That being said, yeah, the asari are the top dogs in the game. They're supposed to be , according to the Codex, but we never get to see any of it. We never see the unity. We never hear about siari. We never see this 'massive fleet' or 'huge economy' or anything but Illum, which is overrun by non-asari. Asari culture – a massive blank. Writers like PMC65 and Melaradark (yay! DE5! Go read it!) have created more asari culture than Bioware ever did. _

* * *

**Humanity Ain't No Punk : the triple threat**

_Humanity is dangerous because it looks at things in ways the asari don't – drop assault teams, penal legions, carriers, and the use of flexible tactics. _

_Also, please keep in mind – this document is written from the viewpoint of a Cerberus guy who's been thinking this whole time how badass humans are , getting an eyeful of just how badass aliens are. The guy has eaten up supremacist, propagandist bullshit all his life and is now seeing the truth, and it scares the shit out of him. _

_Humanity's primary strengths are simple. First, while our population is much smaller than other races, we grow very quickly. The vast number of colony worlds we have will explode over time, each driving more revenue and taxes to the SA. This growth is quadratic, while the other races, who rarely colonize these days, grow in a linear fashion. The human economy may never surpass the asari economy, but it will go from 2% of asari GDP at the start of ME1 to 24% by the end of ME2. Anyone familiar with economic growth can tell you how staggering that is. _

_Second, humanity has laid claim to many, many more worlds than the asari , salarians, or turians, and while our economy is smaller in terms of cash outlay, the human industrial complex is titanic, something that will be touched in the salarian and volus segments. Humans can bring a new dreadnaught online in seven months, compared to a year and a half for the turians and six years for asari. _

_Finally, humans have one advantage the asari simply can't match – independence and reactivity. The very asari mindset is one of collaboration, of follow the leader, and the asari are used to having plenty of time to decide and make up their minds on things. In the Reaper War, and after the Reaper War, that kind of hesitance will cost them again and again. _

* * *

**Asari and the Systems Alliance : the trolling of humanity **

_The asari are not blind to these advantages, nor to the fact that humans have a culture more steeped in political maneuvering and treachery than the gullible turians or self-obsessed salarians. But as with most things in life, t__he asari have a plan for everything, and the fate of humans is part of that plan. _

_As hinted and touched in the document, the asari have some big issues. They got tired of carefully crafted and controlled relationships back in the old days, where customs and clan politics and who was with who controlled who'd you could have kids with. A lot of asari found freedom when the Thirty steered the asari culture towards instead sleeping with aliens, instead of letting the clans control that aspect of life. This had the side effect of disrupting and destabilizing most of the clan structure, which was just a bonus for the Thirty. _

_For a long time, it worked. You didn't (and often couldn't) spend your whole life with the alien, just long enough to have kids by them. Then you could find yourself a nice asari and live out the rest of your life. But the asari didn't think about the long term, and given that it's the asari, long term is everything. You can't have a few thousand years of asari being bondmates with short-lived aliens, and having those bonds broken by death, and then spread all across the asari race, without some kind of backlash._

_In the old days, bond-mates would usually follow each other into death, because both were asari. Now, you have the shadow of that bond-death trailing you for the rest of your life. A few are brave enough to try twice, but most can't. They still have relationships with other asari...and that bond-death leaches across the link. It enters that asari's memories, who passes that pain to another, and another._

_If you're a maiden, and you link with an older asari who's lost a bond-mate, feeling that razor pain is the scariest thing in the universe. It's the literal death of siari, it's losing someone who you've made a part of you in such a fundamental way that it terrifies. Even the Thirty aren't immune to it. It makes you nervous when you think of it happening to you. Makes you reluctant to bond with an alien down the line. _

_Subconsciously, the asari as a race began to associate this feeling taking alien mates. It's already hard for asari to be as sexually attracted to an alien as it would be for them to do so with another asari. You may think Garrus or Thane are dead sexy, but that's your choice to do so. When it becomes driven down by custom, by gossip, by fiat of the Thirty... some asari rebel. (Doesn't help that the Thirty indulge in having pureblood kids whenever they like because they think they're too good to produce ardat-yakshi.)_

_Somewhere along the line, some asari decided they wanted something a bit closer to home, and humanity has fit that bill. The Thirty have decided to take a page out of the salarians book, to use an entire species as a tool. Humanity fills many of the weaknesses , such as they are, that the asari have. The Thirty plan to alter and change the very course of human culture. _

_They've started with biotic cults, because they feel that in a few more generations (ten, maybe twenty – not long to asari, after all) that humans may start manifesting biotics on a genetic level. They can't help but look down on people without biotics, as somehow lesser. And they see the cruelty of the SA government as their way in._

_The Thirty , planning for the long haul, will eat away at the SA from within, starting siari cults on the outlying worlds the SA has not bothered to firm it's hold upon. The independent colonies. The average human is already in awe of the asari, and every human knows the asari were all that stopped the turians from declaring total war on humanity in the FCW. So their influence will be greeted with open arms. _

_The Thirty aren't worried about human supremacists, because the asari know that most humans only look down on what is different from them, and the asari are very much alike to humanity. Gazing on a galaxy full of things on dog-legs, with spikes and plates and tentacles and chlorine and four eyes, the asari might as well be kissing cousins to humans._

_The Thirty know the SA expects an assault on their economy and political structures, and they have no intention of trying such. They will instead focus on the biotic leadership, the commissars that the SA uses to keep it's outlying leaders in line, the disgruntled L2's who are slowly being driven mad by their deliberately flawed implants. They will start charismatic cults and use their vast wealth on charity and winning hearts and minds. The hard-nosed men of the SA government are rich and isolated, divided from their own people. The Thirty will simply appeal to the base masses of humanity._

_And , in fifty or a hundred years, when enough humans are enthralled with asari-led cults, when human biotics turn to the asari rather than their leaders for guidance, when the poor and isolated feel loyalty not to their cruel leaders but the graceful, gentle, loving asari – then , and only then, will the Thirty start playing dirty politics. By that time, however, the SA will be riddled with asari lovers itself. _

_The Thirty want to eventually make humanity a part of the asari race, a new caste at the feet of the asari race, providing comfort and energy, drive and protection, and all in a package that protects them from producing ardat-yakshi but is close enough to the asari form that it quiets the rebellious classes of asari clanless. _

_Above that, even, the asari think humans would make good replacements for the turians, who have begun to slowly pick their way through the manipulations and controls put upon them by the asari and salarians. The turians have served their purpose – pacifying the krogan , keeping the Terminus in line, and providing a stable base of power to keep the other races down. But it wouldn't take much to destabilize the Hierarchy, to send it spiraling into unending civil wars. _

_The Thirty plot, and they know what is coming..._

* * *

**The Thirty and the Beacon : Yeah, it's that bad**

_The Thirty have listened to the wisdom of Athame and her Beacon now for many long years. They know that their 'goddess' was in fact , an alien being. They discovered this a very long time ago, and the Thirty keep it a tightly controlled secret. Each House Matriarch knows. The Priestess of the Sun and the Moon know. The Priestess of the Unseen Star (who used to be Trellani) is in a position to know some but not all of it. The leader of the inventor clan, Clan Skywatch, knows bits and pieces as well._

_Each one, when given the secret, is forced to practice mental walls that prevent anyone they bond with to know the truth, which is also why they prefer (and in recent millennia, only allow) House Matriarchs who have lost their bond-mates, since hiding such a thing from a bondmate is almost impossible. _

_Benezia knows. That knowledge , indeed, is what drove her to listen to Saren's insane rambling about Reapers, rather than have him dragged off and killed. The Thirty have heard the words, they have been told a Great Darkness is among the stars, and that some day it will return, and the asari must be strong. The asari have prepared. They mothball ships , they train their military, they expand their economy. They are convinced they have time, that the Returning is centuries away, that they can forge the Citadel races into swords and shields for the Asari and drive back whatever is coming. _

_But the Thirty does not realize the power of the Reapers. They think it but a few ships, not a rain of thousands. They do not connect yet, except for Benezia, the Fall of Black Leaves with the shape of Sovereign. _

_Benezia knows what the Thirty do not. The Remembrance has already stated the truth – a bit of lore they forgot in the chaos of the War of Queens. The Returning is now._

_The Thirty , effectively, have technology they have never unleashed yet. Some of it would be put into effect quickly if they knew what was coming – proton rifles and regenerating metals. But the end-game was disrupted by the fall of the Empire. The Protheans that discovered the Crucible (from Inusannon ruins) had no time to build it completely. They hid what they could in the Mars Archive , icing the mass array to try to protect it, and scattering beacons to lead survivors to Ilos. If that failed, they made sure that the two races with the information – humans and asari – would be drawn to each other, by dint of looking almost identical. _

_The secret, the truth of Athame, has not dimmed the worship of her by the asari , or even by the Thirty. They genuinely believe Athame was god-touched, that they in turn are holy. The Thirty have lied to themselves for so long that when Trellani, the first Priestess of the Unseen Star who wasn't a member of the Thirty , panicked at what she discovered, they figured she'd get over it. Now that she's gone to Cerberus, the Thirty debate on how to .. react. _

* * *

**Liara T'Soni : I haz a sad**

_Liara's little problems stem from a number of events in her life that will be revealed in my main fic, Of Sheep and Battlechicken, and I'm not about to spoil it here. I will say that Liara was never big on religion, and never was very interested in Athame or her worship. Benezia encouraged Liara's Prothean studies for some time, convinced a better understanding (and fascination) with the Protheans would make Liara more accepting of the truth._

_But events did not turn out that way, and Liara ended up a social cripple. She does not fit the pattern of asari described , or even that of an outcast, because Liara is wounded , mentally._

_Liara's biotics are stronger than most because she is a pureblood of the Thirty with an ardat-yakshi index about half a point below the mark at which melding turns into mind-reaving. Liara is bigger and stronger than Telanya because Telanya is a clanless commoner, and the Thirty used the knowledge of the Beacon to breed themselves to be better than their inferiors in every way._

_Liara isn't using Shepard, or manipulating her. But once Shepard dies, Liara will indeed begin to display many of the traits of the Thirty. _

* * *

**Other Mysteries**

_A few questions remain that I haven't figured out yet, and can't think of good answers to._

_With the mental power and sensitivity of the asari, why is it that Saren , not Benezia, activates the Beacons? _

_Was Benezia really indoctrinated into doing all the things she did, or did she believe this was what was best for the asari race? Again, her entire belief system should have lead her to reject Saren and what he was pitching, and indoctrination is a slow process. At some point, she believed she could gentle Saren's impulses...or did she just tell herself that?_

_Given the advancement and advantages of the asari, why were they so woefully inefficient in ME canon? _

_Perhaps most importantly (and this has been bothering me for ages) , if the asari were the Prothean's chosen agents, did the Protheans perform their alterations the asari with the intent of the asari dominating other races as the Protheans did? If so, can the failure of the Citadel races to stand up to the Reapers be chalked up to the asari simply not being evil enough to want to rule everything?_

* * *

**Up Next: Salarians – ancient Greys **

_Seems like most people want to see the Salarians , so we are off to Mannovai after a short transitional piece. Enjoy._

* * *

The man in the center of the room folded his arms over his massive chest, frowning slightly. The tableau before him was not one he'd ever thought to see, and he clamped back on his anger, forcing his mind to think about the situation logically.

The Shadow Hand was, for a human, gigantic, topping seven feet and thick with muscle. His dark neo-French cut suit was made of black velvet, slashed with panels of silver down the sides and shoulders, open to reveal a silvery-white collarless shirt. His brown hair, tied back as always in a severe ponytail, was just starting to frost with gray at the temples, and the hard lines of his face were made more narrow and cruel looking by his eyes narrowing.

Matriarch Trellani barely came to the Shadow Hand's sternum, but the force of her presence was nonetheless there, like walking into the wind. She dressed demurely as always, so unlike the other asari whores he'd seen, wearing a long and elegant black gown belted with silver, and a sort of asari shawl of semi-transparent silk that was like smoke across her shoulders. Her only concession to her allegiance was a tiny Cerberus pin set against her collar, but it was enough – no other alien in the galaxy wore such a device. Her eyes were amused as she faced down the person seated across from her in the meeting room.

Dr. Minsta was a tall, lanky human, with long, spare, almost patrician features, limp iron grey hair, a long nose, and cool, almost arrogant gray eyes. He affected a thin goatee, which he liked to stroke, and his Cerberus uniform was immaculate under a white lab coat.

The Shadow Hand grimaced. "Doctor , she has a point. Sending your team into salarian space would be a red flag the STG is sure to spot. Humans are not common on Sur'kesh or Mannovai, and the STG would shadow you just out of curiosity as to what you were up to." He paused, grunted, and sighed. "Matriarch Trellani, you will conduct the direct investigative portions of the research. Minsta's team will perform electronic and curatorial intelligence gathering on the Citadel. I'll detail at least one person to go with her to Mannovai, but it will be one of the Operatives, not an agent."

Minsta rose, and with a stiff nod, left the conference room. The doors had barely closed behind him before the rich laughter of Trellani bubbled forth, the slender asari woman finally sitting down and glancing up at the huge figure before her. "You do not trust me, do you , Richard? I don't need anyone to go with me on a jaunt to salarian space."

The Shadow Hand grimaced again. How confident and brazen the witch was! "You are a resource , nothing more. Jack finds you valuable and interesting. I merely find you alien." He turned away, muscles in his shoulders tensing as he did so, glancing over the status reports and recovered artifacts from the asari excursion. "I don't have to trust you to realize you need us, as well. That's why I am agreeing to this. But Jack has an interest in you, and I don't want to send you off ... defenseless." He paused. "And yes , I do wonder why you would volunteer your services like this. It makes me wonder as to motive."

Trellani's voice was light, still amused. "My association with your band of outlaws is solely due to Jack's 'interest' in me, Shadow Hand. I am hardly defenseless, as the Night-wind discovered. And while I do appreciate your aid in avoiding my former associates, I am more driven by my own views and desire to not see humans become lapdogs under the rule of my kind than I am by any ulterior motives."

She smiled again, and he scowled back in return. Her voice was unperturbed, though, as she continued. "Your little group is admirably energetic, but about as subtle as krogan berzerkers in a show of antiquities. I do not wish to .. humiliate … the good doctor, but his conclusions and fixed biases make his analysis of any alien race less than accurate. Perhaps I wish merely to aid in your endeavor by giving a viewpoint less slanted by bigotry that serves no real purpose?"

The Shadow Hand half turned, snorting. "Bigotry? Truth! It took your kind an eon to do what took my kind a few hundred years to accomplish. Humanity has it's own strength, and as you do not need us, we do not 'need' you."

He turned to face her fully, folding his arms once more. "And while you worry that Dr. Minsta's slanted viewpoint will blind us to something vital, the point of sending a man like Dr. Minsta is that he is Systems Alliance trained, and his viewpoints are often those of the AIS investigators and their ilk. We cannot always trust that my overseers in the Systems Alliance will remain a constant factor in assuring Cerberus's survival. The insights he may have give me a good idea of how the Systems Alliance looks at these same issues."

She tilted her head at that, placing her elegant features into repose, and then nodded slowly. "I can see a certain value in that, save for the fact that you are still getting an invalid viewpoint on many things. Confirmation bias is the bane of any attempt to understand the enemy. And seeing as you have defined anything non-human as the enemy...it seems to me that you perhaps need an outside hand at interpreting this information."

Oh, the witch was clever. Despite himself, the Shadow Hand smiled. "And I suppose you feel your own nature is such that you would make a better filter of alien cultures than a man who's spent his life specializing in psychological historical analysis and xenopsychology?" Even as he said it, he saw her smile widen.

"Richard, Minsta has been doing this for about as long as I have been studying human art. Does that make me an expert at human art? The fact that 20 years is a long time for a human does not mean it is of any moment. I have been dealing with these aliens since your race was stabbing each other with pieces of sharpened metal."

She rose, with effortless grace, and he got the feeling it was all she could do not to laugh in his face. "But do not worry, as you said. Dr. Minsta can certainly review my findings and, if it turns out my more balanced approach doesn't give you the .. insights you need, well, you can always send in your teams to Sur'kesh once I am done." The smile widened. "The STG will probably take them apart and send you each one back in some charming fashion, like reduced to their base elements and mounted on a periodic table, but as you said … Minsta is an expert."

With that, the matriarch turned away, not even bothering to wait for any response, gliding from the room before he could recollect his thoughts. With a grunt of frustration, he tugged at his chin, before leaving the meeting room as well, stomping down the corridors of the base towards his office.

Once inside, he calmed a little, sitting at his desk to consider his options. Trellani had an undeniable point – Cerberus could not afford to underestimate or overestimate foes based on racism or feelings of human supremacy, even if such were clearly the case. He pulled up files from his work center, bringing up maps and projections of Minsta's original planning and timel ine for the salarian investigation.

Trellani would fare better in STG space with her own resources. Still, as much as it galled him, he couldn't afford to send her in alone. The asari Matriarchy was still looking for her, and anything that infuriated that pack of harpies brought a smile to his face. He'd have kept Trellani alive and well just to spite the Matriarchy, truth be told, even if she did nothing but sit around on Jack's arm and gossip. The fact that she was useful to their efforts – and shockingly non-judgmental – was a bonus.

He pulled up the files of his Operatives – independent operators with no known ties to Cerberus, used when they needed tasks done that couldn't be traced back to their organization. There was Pel, the clean up man, but while he had a good mix of military and espionage skills, he was usually sent out to eliminate loose ends, and Trellani would probably react poorly to that. Then there was Ekko, a brilliant financial saboteur. But Ekko was no good in a fight, despite her other skills...

The Shadow Hand grimaced. As much as he disliked it, he'd have to utilize someone with a touch of both class and ability, and most of them had at least a tangential connection to Cerberus. He brought up another profile, carefully reviewing the operations undertaken, looking thoughtfully at the picture of the agent, then nodded, tapping the comms link on his desk.

"Have Agent Lawson report to me. I have a request for the Illusive Cell."


	14. Chapter 14 - Asari Miscellany

**A/N: ****_As the Cerberus Files are mostly geared towards providing an understanding of asari, they are light on many aspects of asari culture. I do not want people to think the asari culture is blandly sexualized – that's merely the rather hide-bound take of Dr. Minsta. The following is some out-of-character (neutral tone) notes on asari that didn't fit anywhere else properly. _**

**_I'm already working on the salarian history, but I wanted to get this out of the way first._**

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space : ****Out of character notes: Asari**

**Asari Social Interactions**

Asari are very much creatures of ritual and habit, and they practice a wide array of social interactions that are unique to them. Introductions are very important, as are times and places for asari to meet that are deliberately shorn of social politics.

When two asari of equal social stature meet for the first time, they introduce themselves. Clanless will state their bloodline and mother, members of the Clans will state their Clan affiliation, and lesser Houses will state their family. A member of the Thirty will state their House, their mother, and the key figure of their ancestry. For example, Liara T'Soni would announce herself as Liara, chatelane of House T'Soni, daughter of Benezia, scion of the Line of Nathess T'Soni, who slew the Silent Queen.

If the introduction is in a formal setting, they will partake of an alkaline tea called chathesi. The chathesi ceremony is simple, pouring each other the drink and taking turns sipping while the other person defines themselves by achievement. The ceremony usually has several formalized topics – one asks about one's bondmate, their matriarch, their sisters, and their pursuits.

When two asari of unequal stature meet, the senior introduces themselves first. Depending on the gulf, chathesi may or may not be partaken. If the gulf is large – a member of the Thirty introducing herself to a clanless, for example – offering chathesi to her lesser would be a tremendous complement. Otherwise, after the introduction, the lesser is expected to withdraw.

Asari coming together for social interactions often prefer to eat before any other activity, usually small finger foods and light drinks. Maidens are not held to high standards of behavior, most of them being obsessed with pleasure, entertainment, excitement, or their own fixations. Matrons will usually talk about their families. Matriarchs, when they participate in such things, will usually talk about their pasts and what they have learned from them, and otherwise remain calm and watch their younger peers enjoy themselves.

Asari have a love of the dramatic, and storytelling with a certain level of embellishment is a fine art among asari parties. Asari are particularly enraptured by the cold and dangerous Justicars, who have enormous followings among the maidens of Thessia. The Justicars, of course, find this ridiculous to the extreme, but there are magazines, fan clubs, action figures, books, even movies about the Justicars and their achievements.

* * *

**Matriarchs **

The asari matriarch is a powerful force in asari society. Even a clanless matriarch has the respect of the highest, for surviving so long and maintaining herself. Typically, matriarchs will have an idea, concept, or motivating goal, one they've had all their life, and move towards this as they age. Often times, this concept attracts the attention of others, and these become followers of the matriarch.

Some matriarchs have enormous responsibilities , such as duties to the temple or running corporations. They do not let this interfere with their duty to act as guides for their people, and matriarchs are highly respected in whatever they turn their hands to. However, most matriarchs end up setting rather modest goals and , as such, their followings are rather small.

Matriarchs (especially on Thessia) continue to gain biotic power from absorbing eezo as they age, and thus are some of the most frightening biotic figures in known space. A clanless matriarch who has not paid much attention to focusing her biotics is still capable of overmatching a trained turian cabalist or even an STG biotic specialist just by dint of sheer biotic force. Fighting a civilian matriarch is difficult enough, as her barriers are about as strong as that of a MAKO and her biotics throws hit with about 1400 to 1700 N (stronger than most humans biotic charges can hit). A trained matriarch, or worse, one who has studied the teachings of Athame and thus the ancient and mysterious abilities of the Protheans, is even more deadly.

Matriarchs are not invulnerable. Despite everything they are very old, and as time goes by , while they don't age as humans do, they do become slower. The lithe movements and extreme flexibility of a maiden are gone for the vast majority of them. Also, matriarchs have gotten so used to having plenty of time to determine and react to events that they can be taken by surprise.

As a daughter matures, she often links with her matriarch for guidance. In the houses, this is done by the House Matriarch, in the clans, by the Clan Matriarch. In clanless, they often form informal family groups where two or three matriarchs provide guidance. Almost no asari venture, from fire deparments to dancing troupes, is lead by anything but a matriarch.

* * *

**Asari Titles and Formality**

The asari are big on formality, especially in social settings involving the Thirty. That being said, titles like 'princess', 'queen', or even 'matriarch' have human overtones that are not exactly correct. The best translation of shlantha , for example, is something like 'daughter-of-they-who-fell-from-Athame's-blood-respected'. Asari 'royalty' does not wear pink dresses and jewelery, nor do they ride around on massive estates. These titles are used to indicate a level of deference and even fear of the lower asari towards the Thirty.

Other titles are used as markers of respect. The asari prefer to use titles only during formal introductions. Liara would be introduced as a princess of the House T'Soni, but no one would call her 'Princess Liara' – princess , for the asari, is a title of her status, not her position. She would be called Lady Liara, or perhaps (in a truly stuffy formal setting) Chatelaine Liara.

Formality among the Clans is even more strict, as each Clan has it's own byzantine hierarchy where titles are used whenever discussing Clan business. Clan titles depend on one's position and social standing in the clans.

The clanless do not put much stock in the use of the ritualized titles. They are more casual in introductions, at least in that respect.

* * *

**The Thirty and Asari Society**

In the eyes of the average asari, the Thirty are directly descended from Athame, making each one of them divine. Their larger size and power only reinforces this. While many asari no longer worship Athame solely, preferring to focus more on siari, this is not due to dwindling believe in the Goddess, but the slow infusion of awe leading to most asari feeling that the Thirty should be an intercessor between Athame and the asari people.

The Thirty's beliefs range from acceptance and mania to tired and quiet unconcern. Most are used to the concept of being divine, and tend to take themselves a bit too seriously. This leads to accusations that the asari are 'elitist' or 'stuck-up'.

* * *

**Asari Foods and Drinks**

Asari foods cover a wide variety of fish, seaweed, fruits, and leafy vegetables. The most common asari food is pancres, a light sweet breadlike wafer filled with a mix of seaweeds and spices. Asari love all forms of seafood, prizing salarian blackfin and terran sea bass above even some asari fish, and prefer seedless fruits from the flame-tree, which are round, sweet, and pale grey in color, tasting somewhat like a mix between a pear and grapes.

Asari usually prefer small serving sizes, but as all asari are biotic and burn a lot of waste heat , they have very high calorie diets. As their bodies have measures to prevent arterial blockages, they consume a great deal of fatty meats and sugars, without gaining much weight. Rather than set mealtimes like humans have, they tend towards snacking when hungry.

Asari drinks include those fermented from fruit and a very strong, powerful series of drinks based on animal extracts. Some of these are potent enough to intoxicate krogan. Asari also brew a wide variety of seaweed and fruit-based teas, although some of these are seasoned quite bizarrely for human tastes, including salt, cinnamon, or even chocolate.

Asari delight in salarian cuisine, and have become very fond of human whiskey and gin. They obviously cannot partake of turian dishes but oddly enough turian cooks, with their meticulous eye for detail, are quite popular in asari space. Asari discovered chocolate five years after humans came on the galactic scene and now purchase and consume six times more than humanity does.

* * *

**Asari Romance**

The asari concept of romance is much different than that of humans. Asari have a belief that being with one person limits both them and the lover to a narrow range of experiences, so asari are free with their dalliances. That being said, as asari move out of the maiden state, they begin to desire some form of stability, and even wish for the devotion of someone to them.

Given the asari are about the only race that widely dallies with other races, they've gotten very good at figuring out what makes alien hearts beat faster. With turians, they focus on fidelity (however stupid that seems) and on their own ancestors – turians are immensely impressed by being introduced to a matriarch. With salarians they focus on the here and now, with krogan they tend to become more rambunctious and even combative.

Asari romances with humans are complicated, as asari don't really get humans. This ends up with both partners being emotionally hurt, sometimes quite badly. The more emotionally hurt an asari gets, the more she is likely to cling and try to fix the problem, which only excacerbates the breakdown. Humans are insanely jealous and even the most jaded can't handle the utterly open relationships asari often enter into. The number of suicides for broken relationships of this nature is sadly quite high.

Asari clanless have begun, with the seeping into the general asari psyche of bond-death, to take on more casual relationships, sometimes not even going beyond linking and melding to the true bond. The wild nature of many maidens means they're unlikely to do so in any case, but some asari are experimenting with red-sand and other biotic drugs to aid them in achieving a nervous system energy to achieve pregnancy without the bond.

* * *

**Asari Literature**

The asari genres of literature have some overlap with humanity – they have romance dramas, historical thrillers, etc. Two genres specific to the asari are echas and kalthos.

Echas, roughly "seeking", is a mix of asari philosophy and autobiography, written by asari who have lost a bondmate. Echas novels are searing emotional manifestos, laced with poetry , art, rambling discourses and even stories of the relationship. They are often read by teary-eyed maidens who promise themselves their own relationships will be different. Aliens find them touchingly sad – the ever famous Nekkia Corridor was based on one of the earliest, near mythological Echas sagas.

Kalthos , meaning "to grasp" , is asari poetry written by matriarchs, tied into the wisdom they have gained, and arranged around essays defining what each poem and piece of wisdom means. These books are immensely popular, but are almost impenetrable to outsiders.

Asari of course have a full range of literature, but epics, sagas, and memory-chants make up the largest part. The Code of the Justicars is one such chant, composed of many sutras, but longest of all is the Long Dirge, sung upon the destruction of one of the Houses of the Thirty, literally cataloging all the long honors, victories, and joys of the House.

* * *

**Relationships between the Asari Clanless, Clans, and Houses**

Asari society is not divided by economic status but by social standing, and as such, it's hard to define the relationships of the asari in a way that makes sense to humans. The easiest way to envision it is if the clanless were the lower class working poor, the clans were the upper middle class, and the Houses were the filthy rich.

The Clanless are focused mostly on their own lives, families, and friends. Few if any have aspirations higher than being successful in their work, raising their children, and being one with their peers. They tend to look at the Clans as backwards and yet elitist, since some jobs and professions are closed to those who aren't a member of the Clans. In turn, the Clans look upon the clanless as mostly unskilled commoners, unable to sacrifice to achieve the sort of focus the Clans have achieved. But the Clans are also jealous in a way of the Clanless, who have no social control over their lives, or who they mate with, etc.

The Clanless look upon the Thirty fearfully and with awe, often having been raised to utter a short phrase of blessing after even saying the words "The Thirty". Most Clanless do not understand the Thirty or what it is that they do, only knowing them as the mighty. Some outcast Clanless resent them for the fact that as clanless they rarely if ever will rise to such heights of power, even though this resentment is mixed with a grudging admiration. The Thirty, for their part, look upon the clanless as helpless children, needing of guidance and protection. The Thirty feel it is their responsibility to protect the clanless, even while it's their right and privilege to guide them.

The relationship between the Clans and the Thirty are complicated and vary from Clan to Clan, but for the most part the Clans, being traditionalists, are even more subservient and respectful of the Thirty than the clanless are.

* * *

**Purebloods and Asari-asari offspring taboos**

Among the clanless, purebloods are seen as disgusting throwbacks, and distrusted as being possible latent ardat-yakshi. The taboo is very strong the poorer the asari go, with the offworld clanless being even more opposed. That being said, the clanless also embrace relationships with other asari more often, and many , after a short-lived life with their alien mate, return to asari for comfort. But comfort is not having children, and the clanless almost never indulge in such. Those who do often do so out of emotional instability. Samara ended up having children with her childhood friend because both of them had alien bond-mates die on them before they could have children with them and were extremely traumatized.

The Clans are even more restrictive – asari having offspring with another asari are ejected from the Clan forever. While clanless merely look down on the purebloods, the Clans reject them utterly.

It is only the Thirty that are known to do such things. Even there, purebloods are not seen with any favor, and most will not be popular as House Matriarch. But such joinings happen, especially with smaller houses who seek to link their favor to larger ones. Benezia's and Aethlya's relationship was the scandal of the century for many asari, but it was intended to heal the vicious breach between House T'Soni and House Vasir. It ended up only making it worse when the two split up.

Purebloods who are not ardat-yakshi are usually biotically stronger than other asari, meaning that a Pureblood of the Thirty is often a match for whatever she may encounter. But the stigma against such in the Houses is very strong, and most such Purebloods end up mere plays in the politics of House relationships, shunted aside to less important positions or even sent to the Citadel.

* * *

**Asari religious practices**

About 7% of the asari follow the tenets of Athame , not counting the ranks of the Moondance clans. About 32% of asari are devoted to siari, while another 51% at least follow it's tenets. The remaining ten percent usually follow siari mixed with some other alien religion – salarian wheel rites, turian ancestor worship, or more recently, human zen Buddhism. Human Christianity and Islam, fixiated on concepts of sin and submission, have not made any real inroads into asari society, nor has hanar worship of the Enkindlers.

* * *

**Asari Morals and Ethics**

Asari morality is scaled and set different than human morality in some ways. They cherish life and see murder, rape, theft, and slavery as mortal sins, but they do not attach morality to relationships, sex, or friendships. Asari morality is more about why an act was committed than the act itself , but even then, most asari are forgiving of trespasses against the individual, and hard on those who go against the asari race.

Asari ethics are also mostly based on cooperative natures and consensus. Unethical acts for asari include deliberately injuring a person's emotional or mental state to gain advantage, the misuse of public funds in any capacity, or serving outside influences before the needs of the asari. Human ethics, with it's focus on fair play, is strange to asari, who will angle for every benefit and advantage they can without doing any permanent harm.


	15. Chapter 15 - Salarian Intro, History

**A/N: **_I'm starting the Salarian section, but I still have some work left to do on the asari piece, based on feedback. I apologize for the very long length, but as it turns out this took DAYS to write, because so much of it is new material that one must come up with from scratch._

_There's a lot of influences in here – sixties revolutionary culture, Starship Troopers, a bit of neo-Platonic thinking, psychosomatic planning, and of course, a touch of Three Kingdoms bickering. It's probably also not a good sign that most of this was written to the background accompaniment of Orochimaru's Theme, is it?_

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

HERA-SIX-NINE-NINE

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

Dearest Jack, clever Richard, and lovely Rachel,

I've arrived safely on Mannovai, and with the help of my friends in the University of Sur'Kesh, have already amassed a staggering amount of historical data. Agent Lawson is attempting to learn something of the art of being seductive without relying on one's body to do so, but she remains a dull stone in many regards, despite her intellect and fierce skills. Still, her background in analysis helps when I must sort through this morass of trivia – salarians are so savage and yet fussy about the events in their history!

Minsta's work, while certainly interesting, was almost ham-fisted and certainly inelegant when it came to describing my race. Do not think such a droll document sums up the asari. There is no mention of the many rituals and ceremonies that define the life of the least of us, nothing about the relationships between mothers and daughters, no indication of so many aspects of our culture. As a guide to familiarity with asari, it lacks the touch of true experience.

Asari, however, are used to such brusqueness from creatures who live a span of time that wouldn't even be sufficient for an asari to master her craft. Salarians, with their blazingly short lives, are more complex and nuanced. The keyword you must incorporate into your understanding of salarians is _awareness_. They are aware, of every second, on many levels that not even the finest asari minds can comprehend.

Salarian history, of course, is something that truly requires a deep and open understanding of the nature of the species in question to grasp what is significant and what is merely gilded pride, or even mere happenstance. One could argue that, despite the reshaping of human morality and society that was inflicted on you by Emperor Ardiente and the Manswells, that human history even at this late date is still shaped by events such as World War II or the inability of China to master it's inward-looking focus. Such is it with the salarians as well.

I will of course provide an overview of salarian history, but I will try to indicate those points and people that truly altered the flow of their narrative. It is not enough to recite dates and dry facts, with salarians you can feel a glimpse of what it must be like to be an asari, when in the span of a single human life three or even four salarian generations pass.

Salarian culture is hyperactive, polymorphic and yet anchored on concepts that haven't changed in thousands of years. It's languages are complex and laced with mathematics and logical precepts in a way that shows the bend of salarian thinking. And salarian religious concepts are perhaps more influential in their daily lives than with any other race.

I will attempt to enlighten, but it is your choice as to if the light of my words falls upon the waters or the hands.

**Trellani Thought of the Day: **A system that doesn't encrypt it's footer messages and yet has root access to every outgoing message could carry protoformed VI hacks through your entire network. You should really secure that.

* * *

**Prehistory **

The earliest salarians were salamander like creatures dwelling on the rich, wide rivers of the Mantha Forest in central Sur'Kesh. Sur'Kesh is a tropical planet, with two continents – Ikkune, or 'core', and Irukka, or 'beyond'. Ikkune is a large, heavily forested continent with lush jungle between three huge river vales that spill into the sea. Irukka is a long chain of massive mountainous isles that was once a shield mountain range before it began to subsume into the warm oceans.

These early salarians were clever little creatures, and their cousins, simka, still can be found today. Doglike and agile, with quick reflexes and masterful senses of sight and smell, they were engaged in a vicious evolutionary contest with heavier, larger mammalian creatures. The salarians were forced to rely on their minds and reflexes in the dangerous environments of the Mantha Forest, and were able to survive by dint of preying on the children of their competitors.

A series of tectonic events has been postulated for a global rise in sea levels, with many of the forests becoming wetlands and swamps, tilting things in the advantage of the proto-salarians. However, the lizards were never amphibious, and ended up mostly living at the edge of the established wetlands, living on insects and carrion, while mammals starved from the destruction of the vegetation they depended upon.

It is interesting, and even a touch humbling, to realize by what simple chance there may have never been salarians. And perhaps I am merely fanciful to wonder what would have taken their place if not for that surge in the sea. But the salarians thrived, and as the oceans slowly receded, they needed higher rates of locomotion. Thus, by about half a million years ago, salarians reached a fairly upright stance, and shifted from insect eaters to full time scavengers and carrion feeders as their mass grew.

There is a great deal of archeological evidence (most of it curated neatly away in salarian museums) that some precursor race prior to Protheans tampered with salarian development at some point, but that effort did not yield the expect results and the project was abandoned. It is sad to consider what loss of function must have been entailed, but the fossil record shows salarian brain size increased four-fold by 300,000 years ago, while the jaw structure was significantly altered from that of a scavenger to an omnivore.

The reasons for this were fairly simple – a purely carnivorous creature of that size would have swiftly grown to become an alpha predator. Given the fragile ecosystems of Sur'Kesh, this would have almost certainly lead to explosive growth followed by starvation and mass die offs. Additionally, if the ancients were attempting to breed sentient beings, then records indicate that omnivores are the most likely candidates. With the dubious exception of the vorcha, no sentient race has ever been recorded that is not either herbivorous or omnivorous. (The reasons are complex and this is not a study on evolutionary sociobiology.)

The new meat-light diet of the ancient salarians meant that they slowly lost mass and bulk over the next geological periods, eventually ending up as rather clever fishers, eating wild fruits and some light hunting of small, fat-rich animals such as river lizards and mannosk (an animal much like oxen but adapted to river life).

Ancient salarians organized themselves into rough hunting packs, usually several hundred males protecting a few dozen females. Even then, the ratio of male to female was skewed, and much of today's salarian society probably traced back to savage, unthinking battles between competing packs of hunters.

These ancient salarians, even then, must have been devastatingly swift. The fossil record is inexact, since so much of the salarian skeletal mass is cartilage, but there were several such bodies found preserved in swamp tar that showed the same limber carriage, elegant limbs, and unique hook-horned heads as modern salarians.

* * *

**First Salarian Sentience**

Salarians began experimenting with basic tool use around two-hundred thousand years ago, mostly sticks and the like, but the oldest 'complete' set of stone flake-style implements dates to less than ninety thousand years ago. (Please note that humans experimented with the Oldevai tools nearly two million years ago – human technological speed only reached impressive paces after the rise of writing.) They mastered fire nearly seventy thousand years ago, and simple packs slowly began to form hunter-gatherer associations.

These ancient tools were not universal – some tribes had lesser implements – but they spread rapidly, and with the control of fire began moving from living in forest clearings to making their own. The salarian nest was several heaped layers of stones and mud, forming crude ziggurats – a shape of building they prefer even to this day. There may be some innate psychological safety in such shapes, or perhaps racial memories. (Ms. Lawson suggests kidnapping a few and performing psychological batteries. If you chose to indulge in such casual barbarity instead of looking for records of deep asari melds with salarians, then please, take them from the Terminus Systems. I have no wish to deal with STG thugs ruining my morning tea.)

By sixty thousand years ago, salarian hunter packs had ranged far across the core, penetrating into the Yin-Slath Jungles and the Coreai Swamps. They'd mastered slings and spears, as well as heavy bows made with the flexible horns and gut from the heavy mannosks. At some point, following the mannosk herds lead to them beginning to experiment with domestication, and finally primitive agriculture with the mannosk acting as motive power.

The first primitive permanent encampments sprang up around this time, along with increasingly complicated tool uses. The early salarians were inspiringly clever in their innovations. Their stone age tools were elegant, clever, using double-serrated edges and flexible wood, cunningly carved into sliding tubes, to perform their hunts with. Even as savages, the salarians would settle for nothing but the best technology.

* * *

**First Salarian Cultures**

Sadly, given the fascinating nature of prehistoric salarians, contemporary historians pay little attention to them. The jungle and wet nature of Sur'Kesh also works against truly ancient archeological research, as any non-stone artifacts rotted away long ago. Most hard information the salarians have, or care to share, is from the first flowering of salarian culture, some nine thousand years ago.

The earliest rise of such cultures seems to be at the meeting of two huge rivers, below a great bluff of stone that thrust up like a large hand from the waters. This was called the Reach of Sur'Kesh, and even today is the holiest site on the planet. Towering almost four hundred feet into the air and honeycombed with natural, rolling caverns and tunnels carved by ancient vulcanism, the Reach was a fortress created by the hand of nature.

The Reach, in those days, was built around with river crossings, campsites and primitive, wood-paved roads, lacquered with certain resins and mineral salts from the river outflow. Even then, the salarians prized organization and understood the need for paths of travel. The early tribal cultures even had primitive toll systems, bartering fish and salt for furs and meats from those moving inland from the river delta.

These early cultures were mostly hunting and gathering bands, who met at the Reach to practice primitive religious ceremonies. Eventually, this became a series of pilgrimages, a mix of social gathering, religious gathering, and bartering. These early salarians developed a written and spoken language, ancient Kurki, which is the root tongue for all salarian languages.

The river valley was where agriculture was first practiced year round, and eventually some salarians began settling down permanently, carving homes out of the rock cliffs. Sadly, most of the goods this culture produced are no longer extant, but the salarians recorded much art and history on these walls, and in vast cliff carvings around the base of the cliff.

The cultures (known as the Dawn-age Collectives) were four or possibly five large tribal structures, that eventually came to see the Reach as neutral ground, but battled incessantly among themselves for hunting, females and land. The culture that ended up settling around the Reach were brokers and traders, raising crops and fishing and trading tools, grains and the like to the far ranging hunter-gatherer tribes.

* * *

**The Severing**

This amazingly stable culture managed to survive for almost 500 years. Wars were confined to the tribes, never brought within the confines of the Reach, and with this stability, the Reach began to grow wealthy. Acting as the center of trade and power, it's open air markets and temples marked the beginning of real civilization. Written histories and art, carved fish-scale displays and fine weapons were all available here.

However, each tribe began to covet the increasing wealth and power of the Reach, while the Reach itself began training primitive militia. As the Reach salarians began to work metals such as bronze, they kept these superior weapons for themselves. The Reach leadership, a collection of religious tribal leaders who also acted as kings, formed a united council and concentrated power in the hands of a few influential families, mostly those with fleets of fishing boats or large croplands.

Political tensions reached a head around 8500 years ago, when the out-land tribes decided they were going to claim the Reach for themselves, once and for all. Tired of being forced to live a subsistence lifestyle, yet unwilling to form cooperative groups with the skills and determination to create their own towns, these tribes were more opportunistic militant bands than rich tribal cultures. Cruel and rapacious, they bartered their females as if they were fish, and became violent and arrogant, embracing a combat based, honor-based culture of weakness being seen as a perfectly valid reason to kill.

Some of this immoral – or perhaps, anti-moral – stance is still seen in many salarians. Historically, salarians have never openly declared war, seeing it as a stupid surrender of advantage.

The ancient tribes were too specialized – some depended on hunting, others on fishing, others on trapping or logging – to succeed in a group endeavor without the skilled coordination of the Reach culture, but they convinced themselves they could just take it over through military conquest.

The resulting war was a catastrophe. Fire, corpses and massive amounts of fighting destroyed the tribes, ruining the crops and pillaging much of the outlying settlements around the Reach. The Reach forces, armed with bronze scale and swords, could hold their own in battle, but the Reach was very heavily outnumbered by seven to one. Worse, most of the Reach inhabitants were soft compared to the hard, wild tribesmen. Finally, with the ugly reality that the Reach was pinned by rivers, they could be laid siege to by the outlanders, who could hunt to supply themselves even as the Reach starved.

The shaman-kings of the Reach decided the best way to win was not through force of arms, but rather through subterfuge. Using valuable gifts and emissaries sent under the cover of darkness, they promised each of the three largest tribes that the Reach would surrender to them if they were able to stop their fellow tribes from ransacking the city and killing it's people. They suggest that, indeed, the lesser, weaker tribes were a threat to the stronger three tribes, and that a single winner would embrace a new era of control and power for the tribes.

This enough probably would have reduced the enemy to manageable numbers, as the three decided that the only way to ensure they would be on top would be to obliterate their rivals. But the salarian mind is more devious than mine or yours.

Seventeen other salarians volunteered to carry false messages through the night. They knew they would be captured and killed. The messages they carried were purportedly to the three large tribes, stating the Reach would ally with the larger (and more organized) tribes if they in turn fell upon and destroyed the smaller tribes.

As might be expected, the ruse worked brilliantly. The smaller clans attempted to swarm the larger tribes, who were already fighting for the right to rule. Battles erupted all along the battle and siege lines, as driven by greed and fear, they turned on one another.

The result was a savage free for all, turning in a slaughter of most of the tribal armies, and ending with a cold-blooded massacre of the many of the survivors by the Reach. The tribes, shattered, fell back to their hunting grounds, but the Reach leadership decided to take a drastic effort to secure their livelihood, and continued to attack.

Many of the tribes who didn't take part in the attack, seeing the bared might before them, retreated to the southern mountains, choosing to live off the land. The tribes that fought, on the other hand, managed to regroup near the coast, swearing revenge on the Reach.

As a result, over the next couple of centuries, the Reach identified and kidnapped as many females from the hostile, out-land tribes as they could, using assassins to kill off powerful tribal leaders, and reduced the tribes to shadows of themselves. The Reach civilization, absorbing the remains, centralized their government around the four shaman-kings of the Reach and unified salarians, expanding outward from that point. What remained of the tribes fled far from the Reach, eventually building boats and fleeing over the sea to the islands of Irruka.

* * *

**Salarian Iron Ages**

The Reach empire (the ancient name for it was literally Ulkana, or "Reach Empire) grew rapidly in the 800 years that followed, slowly advancing through iron ages. I use the term 'iron ages' as familiar to you, although the salarians would term it the Age of Intrigues.

However, it can't be argued that this is when the salarians began using iron, and the control of forging iron by the shaman-kings of the Reach meant that, even as tribes began rising on the outskirts of the empire, they were suborned and conquered by the Reach.

Expanding their road network, the Reach Empire eventually controlled almost three fourths of the central continent, ignoring those primitives who chose to well in the rough mountains, building cities as they went. Salarian life expectancy at this point was barely twenty five years, so an accounting of the achievements of individuals was meaningless.

The Reach Empire grew so rapidly that they soon outstripped their ability to grow food. With females gathered in a central location and children kept safe from rampant warfare, the salarian population grew very fast, and sanitation and logistics began to affect the Empire. The fisheries were depleted, the soil began to fail, and even the hunting grew sparse.

The empire tried several methods to counter this, but most ended up in failure as there was no real understanding of the underlying systems and problems with the Empire. The balance of power shifted precipitously between those still with fertile lands and those without, and as the situation worsened so did internal infighting.

The mountain tribes, removed from the center forests,were less effected by this, as their diet depended more on coastal fishing and hunting in the mountains. Additionally, their much smaller population was more diffused among the mountains and did not overstress the environment as much. They kept their distance from the Reach Empire and tried to just endure day by day, building a culture with a hard-core edge of grim survivalist thinking and utterly immoral pragmatism.

Across the sea, the old tribal remnants had forged themselves into a very different sort of culture, one dominated by females instead of males, due to the scarcity of females that had managed to evade the Reach's kidnappers to flee across the ocean. The islands had their own natural resources, including vast fields of edible seaweed and almost inexhaustible fish stocks, as well as the animals on the islands. Secure from any attack from the mainland, they were able to build in peace, but the ignominious defeat they had suffered at the hands of the Reach Empire in the old days still burned brightly, and their culture, while female dominated, still was full of male honor systems and vengeance killings. Thus, even as the Reach began to fall apart, these seagoing cultures added to the problem, raiding the coastline and even plundering the coastal cities.

* * *

**The Collapse**

At some point about 7500 to 7200 years ago, the Reach's ability to feed it's people was destroyed by a series of events happening contemporaneously. First, there was a large drought, which made the rivers fall, killed most of the crops, and ruined what hunting was left in the area. Second, the island tribes conducted a vicious series of raids, focusing not on military targets but on food storage facilities. Having learned from their earlier defeat, now it was these island outcasts who were the ones using spies and saboteurs.

But most devastatingly, the population had simply outstripped the technology of the time to feed. Humans, I believe, had a social scientist named Malthus who once predicted the same fate for your kind, but your ability to grow food and thus attain food security was always ahead of your growth rate. Not so for the Reach. With depleted soil and droughts, with much of the Empire scattered over an enormous area and no real way to preserve food for transport to other parts of the Empire, the Reach came apart. Starvation killed millions of salarians, the dead overwhelming the living.

The next 1500 years were a dark-ages for the mainland salarians. The island tribes stole what they could and withdrew, but much history, art, and beauty was lost in these dark times. Goddess only knows how the salarians survived this time, but eventually a hard core of them did. It had an effect on their culture and their outlook, I believe, one that many who seek to understand salarians fail to grasp. Most think of them as sneaks, as spies, as mere manipulators. But above that, salarians are survivors, driven by a need to defy chance and fate by their intellect and creativity.

Salarians were shaped by this period of want, confusion and loss. Even today, they refer to the Collapse as the blackest of times, a curse used only when something is truly dire. "By the Collapse" is to refer to the utter failure of foresight and planning, the surrender to chaos and anarchy.

Over time, what survivors there were began to slowly band together. Living in small communities lead by a small group of females, these bands slowly began clawing their way back to civilization. It was hard, as they had to use their minds to try to find ways rejuvenate the area, and they had neither any guaranteed food supplies nor the ability to repel raids from the coast.

And yet, between a mix of harvesting river mud and using manure they were able to grow small plots of various grains and plants for consumption. But there was no large gatherings of people on the mainland, and the islands, being much poorer places to grow things on, deliberately limited their population. It seemed for a long time that eventually the last of the Reach cultures would die out, and civilization would be nothing but rude primitives subsisting on the fringes.

* * *

**The Rise of the Daltriana**

Salarians might have toiled in mediocrity for ever if not for the rise of the single most influential salarian in history. As I said, salarians in the ancient days died early, and tracking individuals is hardly productive, but one stands out.

About six thousand years ago, one of the females of the Tribe Salar decided she wanted to be the chief of the tribe. Her name was Shego, and her tribe was nothing special, being one of the broken remains of the original tribal cultures driven into the mountains by the Old Reach Empire. But Shego was brilliant, even for a salarian, and was able to maneuver herself into a place of power in small steps. First, she dominated her tribe, using the power of being the only mature, egg-laying female and leaving military matters to the males while she dominated everything else.

Next, she daringly implied a neighboring tribe was stronger, teasing and dispatching one of her daughters to a third clan implying they could work together to bring down their allies. Her timing in the message was deliberately off, and the other clan attacked their target first, blunting their response to the attack of the Salar. In the aftermath, she absorbed the other two tribes, but did something startling. Instead of a council of elders and shamans, she made a tribal council of elder females.

Calling herself the Daltriana ("she who knows"), Shego began commanding in earnest. The old histories don't state why males, usually aggressive and unruly, listened, but they did. It's a pity Shego was born a salarian, she would have made a brilliant member of the Thirty.

Her stratagems of subterfuge (triple crosses, the use of young females to proud tribal males to gain their allegiance, poisoned river water used to incite enemy forces to drink wine her forces had drugged hours before) were unmatched. With nothing more than guile, iron will, and the ability to out-think and out-plan her opponents, in the 24 years of her reign, the northern tribes had swelled into a massive band of unified warriors under the command of the dalatrasses, the mothers of the lines.

Here it is necessary to illustrate one of the hinge points of salarian history. This event is where the salarians began, fully, to eschew concepts of honor and violence for espionage. They'd used it before, but it was Shego who would let no word be given of an attack until it fell upon the enemy. It was the Daltriana who would form the Silent Step, the first known secret agents of the salarians, masters at disguise and language.

Shego encouraged research, and was interested in plants and herbs. Restless and brilliant, when not incapacitated by egg-laying she was tireless in finding ways to expand the reach and power of her followers. Shego protected those who found new methods to farm, to trap fish, to harness primitive wind powered millstones to provide finer wheat. It was Shego who reached out to the island tribes to trade with, bringing strange fish and spices back to the mainland along risky sea-bound and coastal trading routes.

Shego died at the age of 58, a staggeringly old age for any salarian, much less back in a day before antibiotics or proper sanitation. She left behind nineteen daughters, each of which took the title of dalatrass, and the Northern Tribes began the march to the south. They pushed back the old Reach survivors far enough to establish crop lands, even taking the northernmost cities of the old Reach Empire before settling into place and seeking power by dint of trade.

* * *

**Ergohai, Maithan and Soluthus**

The three groups of salarians – Reach Empire survivors, struggling to rebuild; outcast tribals on the Ikkune islands, expanding their sea empire; and finally, the daughters of Shego, seeking to return to civilization – defined the true historical era of the salarians. They formed three empires, each engaging in subterfuge, spying, trade, limited war, even full out invasions in some cases.

Ergohai, the 'new' Reach Empire, was the most advanced and cosmopolitan of the three, building in the remains of the old Reach. Careful about food stocks and obsessed with technological advancement, Ergohai was less numerous than the other two, but had well-defended walled cities that were hard to attack. Still lead by shaman-kings, Ergohai ended up being, once again, a center-point for trade between the three empires, but was a morass of espionage as well.

Maithan was the ocean-going culture of tribals that fled the Reach early on. Like the followers of Shego, they had a female-dominated society, and they were the most warlike and violent of the empires. They saw Shego's people as cousins and would trade with them freely, but most hated the Reach and warred with them incessantly, using raids and terrorism to contain their growth.

Thus it was Soluthus, the new group of tribes forged into a nation by the hand of Shego and her daughters, (ah, how very familiar to me, and probably utterly strange to you) that held the balance of power. Soluthus wanted Maithan to grow, to farm, make tools, and be able to provide a neutral meeting area, while the mountains the ancient tribes fled to, while not allowing them to grow much food, provided a new boon – rich deposits of iron and gold.

The ocean empire of Ergohai were the only ones capable of producing fish, as well as link the wide-flung cities of Ikkune. Additionally, the threat of attack from the Ergohai kept Maithan from threatening Soluthus.

This elegantly balanced dance endures up to this day, although there is no hostility between the nations now. The Ergohai remain the explorers of society, manning the salarian fleets and are the first to want to colonize, to explore, to pull away. The Maithan remain cosmopolitan, sophisticated and scientific, always pushing development and further organization. But it is the Soluthus, those children of the Salar Tribe, the descendants of Shego, that embody the manipulation and balance of the race.

Shego's influence lead to the dalatrasses becoming the center of salarian politics. As the empires grew, the tribes slowly lost their individual flavor and customs, melting into the national mindsets that enveloped them.

* * *

**Salarian Dawn of Discovery**

The cessation of most open war between the nations led to the need for increasing levels of innovation, as the salarian birth rate was extremely high. The nations were forced to work together to create new methods of agriculture, aquaculture, and to advance the life sciences to a large degree. 4500 years ago, they began to set aside national conflicts, even cooperate, in the name of science and learning.

Called the Dawn of Discovery by the salarians, this age was where they played a continual gamble with the lives of the race against their own wits. Vast academies, called 'uloi', were set aside, funded by salarian governments and businesses. Salarians devoted their whole lives to incremental and fundamental shifts in their understanding of the world, themselves, and all within it.

They rapidly pioneered technology that let them explore the seafloor, creating huge farms of kelp and seaweed, while they engineered a huge bay 80 miles long and 200 miles wide to act as a single gigantic fish farm. They grasped electricity and embraced hydrodynamic power quickly, being one of the few races that did not despoil the natural beauty of their world. Industry was always cutting edge, yet no salarian would be happy with anything but the highest efficiency.

It also lead to rapid advances in war-fighting – they achieved the use of advanced weapons and even biological warfare worryingly fast. And they used such at the drop of a hat, when they needed to, when negotiations failed. And yet, despite these petty skirmishes, peace continued to build, until even these minor fights faded.

The increasing cooperation between the nations as they fought to master their world lead to ever higher amounts of espionage, as the nations competed to ensure they were not overtaken by the achievements of the others. At the same time, it also lead to increasing ties between the nations of a friendly nature, as learning and discovery brought out something incredible in the salarian spirit. Eventually, this lead to one of the wonders of the galaxy.

I have seen many great monuments by all manner of aliens. The incredible Sha Titans of the Dust Age turians, the endless citadel-mounts of the Bangshuk batarian dynasty, the almost impossibly huge Great Wall of China on your earth – all of these raise the flaps of ones skin, to make one feel small, tiny and perhaps even a bit scared. The unity of the asari has always been mighty and our core strength, but I for one have never allowed myself to forget that other races can demonstrate equally strong unity at certain times.

But never have I felt so humbled as when I gazed upon the Sparak, the ancient city of scholars on Sur'Kesh. Girdled by walls a hundred feet high, it was vast circle almost sixteen miles across, filled to the brim with narrow streets and towering concrete ziggurat-towers. Here, millions of salarians were born, lived, learned, discovered, and died for their race. They had no wish or hope to leave, they were slaves in a way, sacrificing their entire lives, and their children's lives and how many generations we may never know, to science. To ensure the Collapse would never come again.

Their mantra, carved in the ancient text of the earliest salarians, was simple: knowledge is possibility, ignorance is death. They strove to bring together the finest minds of the entire planet, to bring together the best of what it meant to be salarian, to find the answers to what lead to war, to the Collapse, and to stop it from recurring.

They sought as well to not just define 'survival through knowledge', but unity through understanding. They wanted to be so valuable, in effect, that no salarian would have to kill another again. To drive entropy and chaos into rout, to bring order to anarchy.

In a thousand short years the Sparak drove development, pushing salarian technology from swords to laser weapons. They grasped techniques other races could not develop without computers and robots, such as precision surgery and genetic manipulation. They bred themselves to be leaner, to be smarter, to be ever faster and more capable of sensory input, until they were little more than flesh made lightning and brilliance given physical form.

Do not dismiss the salarian, pretty Rachel, simply because they seem frail at first glance. You have seen what their soldiers can do. They are not tough, but they never miss. They are not strong, but they can out-think, outrun, and out-dodge you or me by a factor of six. They plan for every possibility, and then for that which is impossible, and then plans beyond that. They think faster, capable of maintaining upwards of five separate lines of thought at once. They react faster, their outrageously over-tuned nervous systems allowing them feats of agility unmatched by any other race, even the drell, and their very physiology lends them flexibility that is equally unmatched.

The Sparak's might brought about an immense change in the world of the salarians. Challenged by the knowledge and influence of the scholars, the priest-kings of Maithan slowly lost their grip on their own people, and eventually a council of dalatrasses took up much of the workings of government from them. Once the last of the aggressive males was no longer deciding political policy, the way was clear for the Salarian Union to be born.

3100 years ago, the nations of Ergohai, Maithan, and Soluthus signed a treaty of mutual cooperation, creating a framework of government that would lead the entire planet into the future. It divided Sur'Kesh into 'tiers of influence', led by dalatrasses, that met to determine a group of three who would speak for all salarians.

War ended utterly and completely, and even internal espionage, although still rampant, at least became less lethal. The uloi were made holy ground, never to be attacked or to be shelter for or against military forces, dedicated solely to the advancement of the race. Many of the most powerful espionage agencies fragmented, becoming mercenaries, working for salarian corporations or private interests.

But the most skilled of the spies unified themselves into a group known as the League of One, dedicated to ensuring the salarian people did not destroy themselves or that any one nation dominate the others. The League prevented and stopped wars, leaked information between nations that defused tensions, and took out aggressive leaders or those stirring hatreds.

The League had the "Six Rules of Approach", which are often quoted by salarians even today, as a kind of defining charter of what the League embodied. The rules were simple, but I include them in this history as the best way of defining exactly what salarians are.

The first rule: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. Salarian history shows this concept repeatedly, the betrayals of the earliest Reach Empire against it's tribal foes shows it.

The second rule: Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy, for then they have no idea of your true power. The switch from military force to espionage and assassination was cited as key example of this rule.

The third rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. The salarians became masters at attritional, asymmetric psychological warfare. Knowing assassins were there to take you out if you went against the wishes of the dalatrasses was more nerve-wracking than actually being attacked.

The fourth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. The salarians believe that every attack the enemy can't answer to with an immediate response must come from sources that don't allow such responses in the first place. Salarians reject solutions that leave the target no choice but to fight, rather trying to sow chaos and uncertainty for as long as possible. An attack that is too successful leaves the target no constructive alternative but direct combat.

The fifth rule: Exhaustion, be it political, economic, or social, is the most potent weapon. The salarians never want to fight foes at full strength, rather preferring them already fatigued and weakened by the time the first heavy blows fall.

The sixth rule: A tactic that requires too much time becomes a risk. Salarians believe the faster and quicker actions are undertaken, the more successful they will be because they offer less reaction time.

These rules are simple, but they shape how the salarians approach the universe, and offer insights into the next portion of their history.

* * *

**Salarian Information and Space Age **

The unity found by the drawing together of nations and cultures lead to further advancements. Always looking for better ways to do things, the brilliant and multitasking salarian mind didn't need augmentation the way other races did, but eventually, they also created computer technology, and from there, realized the potential of such things. Some three thousand years ago, the salarians began their love affair with the computer.

Salarians began to computerize and automate everything they worked on, driving the creation of VI's early on and AI's not much after that. However, these early AI's were very unstable and ended up in stage I rampancy very quickly, leading to the Salarians destroying them and banning further research. Given the salarian attitude towards knowledge, for them to ban a line of research was extremely out of character for them. I find myself wondering if there was more to the AI conflict that is in the histories, but it is difficult to be sure of anything given salarian propensity to alter their own views of their past and to eliminate facts that might challenge the rule of the dalatrasses.

What is known is the salarians began explorations of space some three thousand years ago – well over three hundred years before we asari were able to begin such. Early salarian ships were powered using gigawatt ion drives and multi-stage fusion drives, achieving very high fractions of lightspeed. The mysterious relay at the edge of the Sur'Kesh system drove the salarians mad, but they had no way to activate it at first.

It took the salarians about eighty years of sublight travel before they stumbled onto a system with both Prothean ruins and eezo. In fact, the salarians found the wreckage of an old Prothean shipyard, blasted to pieces in some ancient war but still chock-full of various artifacts and, most importantly, the Prothean VI known as Verment. Badly damaged and suffering a loss of data regarding what happened to the Protheans, it was able to catapult salarian science and understanding of mass effect physics forward a hundred fold.

The second wave of salarian exploration was utterly titanic, nearly a full nine percent of the race flung outwards in exploration and colonization ships, scrambling to locate eezo and build up a knowledge of the universe. An early foray into a nearby system resulted in the salarian vessels coming under attack from an automated defense system from a long-dead alien race, and the salarians began to arm their vessels and work on warships.

Salarian exploration teams used scout ships with huge fuel reserves and powerful FTL engines – indeed, the FTL drives of the salarians were more primitive than those of my own people when we met, but had three times our range. Salarian scouts discovered many planets, and often were hesitant to open new mass relays without knowing what was on the other side. Rather, they would use FTL to explore a wide range of space, opening a new relay only when existing stars they could reach were all cataloged.

Salarian scouts thus managed to observe volus, elcor, and even humans in this manner. There is fragmentary evidence that salarian wide-arc scouts entered Sol around 550 AD, and there are multiple human, volus and elcor skeletons on display at the Salarian Museum of Exploration that date from far before your race was known to others. There is very good evidence that the salarians monitored humanity and the volus for hundreds of years, taking captives and monitoring developments. The salarians deny this , of course... but they deny everything.

What the salarians might have planned to do with such knowledge is moot, as they discovered the Citadel and the asari soon after.

* * *

**Salarian Discovery of Citadel **

Less than a century after my own people found the open flower of the Citadel, the salarian scout teams arrived. At first, there was a standoff – both my people and the salarians nervous and ready to fight. But neither of our races was overly aggressive, and within a few weeks we began to understand each others languages and the salarians sent dalatrasses to speak with the matriarchs on the Citadel.

Our discovery that the salarians had two sexual aspects lead to great amounts of confusion in the language, as we were trying to grasp a concept not seen on Thessia. We had, of course, found evidence of such things on other worlds, but most asari paid no mind to that just as most humans 'know' there is asexual reproduction but see that in terms of one-celled organisms dividing, not sentient beings.

It became apparent that the asari had only a few trump cards. We were already in control of the Citadel, and we had powerful jump drives, faster FTL drives, and more powerful weapons, as well as our biotics. But the salarians had more advanced technology in literally every other avenue, from shields to sensors. The Council of Matriarchs must have run the numbers and applied their wisdom to finding a peaceful coexistence, as I am not sure asari would have won such an early fight.

That being said, the formation of the Citadel Council was more of a collusion between the Circle of Dalatrasses and the Council of Matriarchs both deciding such a thing would help them retain power rather than any meeting of the minds. The Council formation was the first and last time the salarian dalatrasses left Sur'Kesh en masse. The High Dalatrass, Shiron Ergohai, met with High Matriarch Lidya T'Armal in closed quarters in what is now the Citadel Tower but was back then called the Needle.

What words, I wonder, were spoken, between these creatures, one ancient, one barely twenty five years old? Ah, but to have been there, to have seen the dance of words and subtle threats and even more subtle offers. The asari left no record of what happened, but Shiron had a journal of her experiences, and implies she linked in a non-sexual manner with the matriarch, and in her words, "Our goals and that of the blue aliens were not so different. We are both mothers, both fearful of the dark between the stars, both burdened with the leadership of our people into a future we have no information on."

The salarians, as a gesture of trust, offered a display of the intelligence their signals and scanning operators had been able to gather on the asari remotely. The asari were horrified to realize than in two short years, salarians had been able to hack through asari systems on the Citadel to access records on Thessia itself. They realized they were facing a race that, if push came to shove, could do a great deal of damage to them.

The salarians, for their part, were equally worried and concerned about the asari ability to link and meld, which was a very high violation of the only privacy most salarians had, which was their thoughts. It lead to uncomfortable situations among the two races, and the League of One, distrustful of the asari, began investigating them further.

Unfortunately, these investigations lead to the discovery of certain asari contingency plans in case of war with the salarians. Alarmed, and with a cultural misunderstanding of how asari looked at war, the League decided the asari needed to be neutralized. The League, formed in the days where the survival of the race was the highest stake possible, did not attempt to find ways to neutralize the plans the asari had, or to prepare for war. They decided the asari themselves were the issue, and drew up plans for the literal destruction of the entire asari race. The creation of the pulse inhibitor, and salarian money and investment in the salarian biotics program, stem from this initiative.

The League prepared to initiate their masterstroke, finally informing the Dalatrasses of what they had learned. The Dalatrasses, who had drawn up the same kind of plans to destroy the asari in case they proved to be warlike, disagreed with the need to destroy the asari. Thus far, all was peaceful.

The League attempted to do so anyway and the Dalatrasses responded by assembling a group of skilled assassins and other espionage assets. Dalatrass Shiron gave them their duty – "I have for you a special task" – and the STG was born.

The STG and the League engaged in fighting and assassinations for years, before the League was crushed utterly. (Well, almost utterly. It's the belief of some that the so-called League of Zero are cybernetic AI reconstructions of the League of One.) The salarians cleverly used this infighting as a way to convince their asari allies of their sincerity. My people were of course, with our ideas of unity, deeply moved by the fact that the salarians would kill their own people on behalf of maintaining peace with aliens, and as such, the newly formed Council was a group of equals, rather than one or the other dominating.

* * *

**Salarians and the Expansion **

The Salarian Union expanded rapidly after the discovery of the Citadel, opening mass relays more frequently since the asari had indicated they'd found nothing dangerous so far. Salarian colonies sprang up like weeds, scattered far and wide, and the more challenging the task of terraforming the more willing the salarians were to take up the challenge.

Unhappy salarians of all clans and nations found new lives on these colonies, free of most of the political chaos of the home world. At the same time, salarian companies began doing booming business with the asari, and expanded their markets to the colonies of both races.

As the asari and salarians explored, they stumbled across new races. The salarians, already aware of the volus, ensured a peaceful reception when that race managed to breach their home system, and the volus were followed by the batarians, elcor, and hanar. These races were young and the salarians and asari technological level was centuries beyond theirs. As such, these races were not raised to the Council, and were manipulated and controlled as much as possible. Humanity, at the very edge of their FTP range , was ignored.

The union of salarian espionage and asari manipulation was very simply unbeatable. Until the emergence of quarians, no race discovered by the salarians or asari had anywhere near the technological strength of the first two races. The quarians were more advanced in some areas than even the salarians, but their small population and focus on internal affairs sidelined them from the start.

Salarian corporations expanded rapidly, proving adept at combining technology from multiple races into new and improved technologies no one had thought of. The use of heatsink emissions to power hand-held weapons electrical requirements, the development of nano-articulated suturing wire, the development and deployment of the FTL comm drone – these were all salarian inventions.

Several frightening precursors to the Rachni war occurred just before their release – rebelling mercenary groups, corporations that were co-opted by asari spies, the increasing financial ability of the volus – all of these were threats to the Salarian Union.

* * *

**Uplift, Disaster, and Recent History**

Having had several brushes with forces too strong for them to easily handle, the salarians wanted to create a race of loyal soldiers who would do the heavy fighting for them. It was in this vein that they started relationships with the krogan, slowly uplifting them towards a recovery from their nuclear dark age.

Sadly, it was also the salarians who discovered the rachni, in their continual exploration of mass relays. History from this point is, of course, known to everyone – the widening tide, the overwhelming assault. The krogan, hurriedly uplifted fully, thrown into battle, suffering staggering losses. The discovery of the turians, the Krogan Rebellions... having lived through the tail end of some of it, I find myself unwilling to rehash what is already well known. You know it all anyway, and my perceptions of it would no doubt clash with yours.

The emergence of your people caught everyone by surprise, but in hindsight, I remember clearly that the salarians had eerily accurate translators for multiple human languages mere weeks after first contact, and that they were able to provide top-notch medical services for a race that no one else knew existed when the Citadel Relief Team landed on Shanxi. Proof positive, I'd say, that your stories of "gray aliens" with large eyes and slender bodies were actually far-flung salarian scouts.

In a way, that reality – that salarians look for each advantage – is key to grasping their history. Taking away from recent history any insight into the salarian mindset is difficult, because increasingly the salarian government has ensured that most aliens do not see or know much about salarians. They strive to make themselves somewhat aloof, intellectual, even friendly in a cool fashion, when in reality they are calculating monsters.

Amusing. I find myself echoing the sort of bland, hateful admonishments towards those different than me that I derided Dr. Minsta for. Yet I do so for very different reasons. Asari are not perfect, nor are humans, turians, volus, krogan, or any other race. But the salarians have shaped themselves into a cold species, a species of spies, analysts, assassins, and mad scientists. You have never heard salarian music, or seen salarian art – they keep it for themselves. Salarians present one face to the galaxy and another to their close kin, and they follow the whims of dalatrasses more concerned with the survival of their clutch than the cost to others.

I can see handsome Richard's brows drawing together in perplexed fury even now. What difference is my dislike of salarians and accusing them of being selfish, deceiving monsters is there from Dr. Minsta's distaste for the social dance of siari and reeichu, and the fact that we asari see ourselves as better?

I could answer, why else would an asari be in your ranks if she was not herself also a bigot? I could answer, why else would you tolerate the alien in your ranks unless you knew she was even more hateful than you? The difference is so subtle, in that I can hate and despise and still admire and understand and even praise.

But I will not answer in that fashion, but rather more bluntly. The asari may be threatening, but we could not bring ourselves, when the time came, to bring down the ax. We hesitated at genocide for the Rachni. We agonized at the use of the genophage for the krogan. We cringed at the loss of the quarians and cried for fallen, torn Rannoch. We wept at the dead of Shanxi. We see ourselves as better...yet we feel empathy and we wish that we could make all as one.

We are threatening to you because we could change what is to be a human, not because we plan to kill you.

The salarian? He sees you as either an opportunity to make a profit, to learn from, to use, or as a danger. That is not to say there are not friendly salarians...or salarians not so devoted to the race. But they are rare, and all too often, mavericks in their culture. Rarely are they chosen to breed...

Ah, but that's physiology. I have rambled long enough, let us now regard the twisted morass that is the salarian mind.


	16. Chapter 16 - Salarian Psychology

**A/N: ****_I've updated the Biotic Encyclopedia, OSABC, and this doc all in one day. The biggest holdups are beta reading and copy editing. I'll try to get another update or two done before Sunday._**

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

HERA-SIX-NINE-NINE

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

Dearest Jack, clever Richard, and lovely Rachel,

I must admit that your response to my historical document was vastly entertaining – who knew I could reduce elegant Richard to apoplectic spluttering? Did you _really _buy the salarian "oh we are all just absent-minded scientists, research research research" line?

How can you hope to dominate the galaxy when you are as naïve as a quarian on Pilgrimage?

I tease, but I am serious as well. You are correct, your analysis of the threat presented by the salarians was grossly off-base. I will not miss Agent Dasan, as his arrogant dismissal of the salarians as "tiny sneak thieves" was, of course, criminally stupid. If there is value in having a flower of Thessia in the garden of Terra, it is in the fact that I do not blind myself with preconceived notions. To handicap myself in such a way makes me vulnerable, not superior.

Ah, but life is embraced in the discovery of personal flaws. Flowers only grow through pavement when it cracks, after all. In that light, I am happy to give you what I can about the mindset of the salarians.

Do not underestimate them.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **Be strong in your ignorance of the alien. Curiosity, after all, did not help the cat in the end.

* * *

**Salarian Priorities **

I have spent several hours discussing the works of Maslow with Ms. Lawson. It is a fascinating work, and an insight into how fragmented and chaotic the human mind must be, that you must frame even your ability to exist in layers of urges and priorities.

The 'hierarchy of needs' posited by Dr. Minsta for the asari left me in gasping laughter. If there is an advantage to working with your group, it is to be found in the sheer entertainment value of watching a being who isn't even as old as most of my clothing attempt to fathom the mysteries of my entire race.

But perhaps there is wisdom in this approach, and it has the aura of the familiar to humans, so I will embrace it. As such, applying this ladder of needs to the salarians produces some interesting results.

Maslow foolishly ascribes motives such as "food" and "shelter" to a motivating needs structure. Even fire, which is not alive, pursues nourishment – that is not a motive. It is survival. Let us set aside these asinine entry points and focus on how a salarian defines self-esteem.

At it's most basic, humans define self-esteem, I think, through personal achievements and family. That is, the ties that bind most closely are to your immediate blood-kin, and measures of success are always predicated on your own goals and wants. A human who is a virgin will value sexual activity higher than popularity, but will not shun popularity if it leads to sexual activity. These 'goals' are all linked together, feeding one another and the concept of self.

The core concept of 'self' for a human (or, I must admit, an asari) will always be tied to their own perceptions. One can alter the framework these perceptions are made from,, but a human will not willfully delude themselves as to the nature of a thing once they are familiar with it. In this light, humanity's need to secure 'personal security' before they go after achievements or self-actualization is understandable. Human biological drives are those of a race who has never faced the reality of extinction.

Humans define freedom not as openness to concepts, but in the ability to determine one's own path. This is alien to many cultures, who rely on those above to do so. How can a maiden with a mere century of life know more about what to pursue in life than her matriarch who has lived ten times her span?

Salarians... well, salarians are more linear. A salarian's mind works on many levels simultaneously, but towards one goal or status. They are almost inverted from humanity. A salarian pursuits individual achievements and recognition first. Above personal safety, above family, above sexuality. Their highest calling is the achievement of actual worth, that allows them to define their value to society.

A salarian who is a brilliant scientist is valuable to his clan. A farmer who brings in massive amounts of money is also valuable. If the clan values advancement more than profit, however, the farmer is not valuable.

Salarians only reward success, and rather than build up supporting resource to lead to achievement and success, demand success and achievement to be allowed to build up supporting resources. Males can't even think about offspring, or owning a home, or alternatives like starting a family with an asari, until they feel their achievement provide evidence of their skills and prowess.

In other words, self-actualization provides self-esteem, which leads to family and security. In humans, family requires security, which requires self-esteem leading to achievement.

This reversal of importance is why salarians come off as humble and effacing to you people. A human who decided to become a billionaire before he had the confidence to feel good about himself or date a girl would be seen as … what is the word? A weirdo?

To salarians, rewards without proof of excellence is corrupting. A worker who is rewarded merely for showing up to work is insanity. Humans working jobs below their level of competence to pay for their child's education is lunacy.

More importantly, salarian perceptions of success are not based on a concept of self. In their mind, the self-assessment is the most worthless of things! Only when others acknowledge the achievement does the salarian take pride in it.

* * *

**Salarians as individuals**

On an individual basis, most salarians are psychologically simple. They have a long term goal they aspire to, which is usually either the chance to produce offspring or the chance to make their name important. This goal is a distant thing that they expect to consume their life. In pursuit of the goal, almost nothing else matters. As long as the goal is achievable, the salarian has a focus to their life that they cannot be shaken from.

Leading to that goal are a series of checkpoints, in their mind, of where they need to be in terms of achievements and acceptance. Salarians don't have 'self-esteem' – they merely determine if a thing can be done or not. They don't go after 'dreams' – they only pursue goals that are both plausible and reachable without heroic efforts.

The individual salarian does not think about 'his race' or 'his species', unlike asari. They have no universal feeling of brotherly or sisterly love. What they do have is an iron-lined determination to get to their planned goal, and a focus on planning the best way to achieve it.

Rewards come when the goal is achieved, and are rarely the goal itself. One doesn't want to have kids to engage in sex, but because being chosen to breed is a sign one is a valuable member of society. They seek importance not even to validate themselves, but to prove to others that such validation is needed, for they have aided the group.

It is hard to understand the difference this makes when reduced to clinical terms, so let me put it more plainly: a salarian doesn't sublimate their personal desires for the good of the group, as an asari might. Their personal desires are literally to be of service for the good of the group. It is not unity of thought and purpose, but rather the inability to perceive success as anything but this self-sacrifice. A salarian who is not chosen to breed doesn't resent the ones being called, rather, they simply accept their value is not worth that investment.

This makes salarians almost immune to depression and other mental maladies caused by lack of achievement. The salarian's goal or focus gives them a tangible and unalterable deterrent to disappointment and setback, as the goal will almost always require effort to achieve and as long as any progress is made, the salarian is pleased.

It also means salarians, very simply, do not "give up". They may shelve a goal for a period of time, but they neither forget it nor abandon it in the long term.

* * *

**Salarians as clan families**

Salarians do not have nuclear families. They have clan families based on a linage of females. Each clan has one and only one dalatrass. The dalatrass is a female (usually a daughter) hat carries out the will of the daltriana of the clan. The daltriana is the salarian female who is pregnant and lays eggs, increasing the family size.

A daltriana's only concern is preparing her daughter to take her place. She passes on wisdom and insight, and in time the daltriana dies. The dalatrass ascends. Males compete for her favor and the right to breed, either with her or with a daltriana of another clan in a swap.

The 'family' has some aspects similar to yours – a feeling of brotherly affection for siblings, a last name, etc. But it is also very different. There are no salarian 'father's that get to acknowledge their child as the eggs are usually fertilized by several different males to ensure diversity. The very nature of salarian childbirth ensures the 'father' is only around at the whim of the dalatrasses and daltriana.

A clan that is very successful may have multiple egg-laying females, who in private refer to each other as "sister". Due to the complex breeding relationships and the homogeneity of salarian RNA, inbreeding is not a factor but remains taboo, only used when the clutch is in danger of failure.

* * *

**Salarian Males  
**Males are bombastic, full of themselves, and usually icy calm even under provocation. They are more aggressive than the female, and define themselves by dint of their achievement and prowess. Given to a flair for the dramatic and a curious lack of critical self-examination, the salarian male will usually focus on a given endeavor to the exclusion of all else.

Male salarians are particularly prone to hubris, as they are often blind to the effect of their actions or focus, preferring to see what humans call the 'big picture' and what salarians refer to as the wide view. A salarian mercenary does not stop to think of the lives he has ruined, because his focus is first on his value to his mercenary band and second on his personal combat prowess and how he must grow that.

Males, being so much more common than females, tend to defer to the female when it comes to clan family relationships and long-term decision making. This is due to the fact that the salarian male is impulsive and will often engage in decision making without following through on all possible outcomes, confidently secure that their actions, made in the intent of advancing the interests of the group, are justified.

Males can be sentimental, a flaw females do not have, and often form honor-based attachments to other males (alien or not). This kind of bonding serves a purpose, as it's often with a more powerful male, who will act to aid in defense of the salarian in question (and thus, aid the group), but it can lead to a more friendly set of actions as well, when the result outweighs the cost.

Males still have a streak of the old valor-honor based braggadocio somewhere in their heart of hearts. They will be flashy and witty when it strikes them, and their taste for the dramatic or creative lends them more interest in alien interests and people that females have.

* * *

**Salarian Females**

By contrast, the rare salarian females can be summed up as stubborn, insular, and dismissive of anything that doesn't benefit them personally. Females spend half their lives learning to lead, and half their lives incapacitated by egg-laying. Denied much opportunity for travel, exploration or to determine the path of their own lives, they instead retreat within duty to the family and close their minds to many alternatives.

The salarian survival instinct means that a salarian female's focus will always be the security and success of her offspring and mates, and nothing else. Dealing with the dalatrasses of Sur'Kesh is always a nightmare because every deal and negotiation must be framed in a light that lets the dalatrass find exclusive benefit for her and hers. There is no word, nor even a clear understanding of the concept, of charity or altruism in salarian culture or language.

To a female, her outlook depends on if she is a breeder or not. (The term sounds demeaning, but it's a literally straight translation from the salarian, "daltris" – to breed"). Young females are constantly being evaluated for their mental agility, charm, foresight, and physical endurance. Given their scarcity, the fact that they lead sheltered lives far away from the bustle of modern society should be a shock to no one. Only the most rare dalatrasses, such as the High Dalatrass, ever leave the world and participate in politics to any degree off of Sur'Kesh or their colonies. As a result, most young females are somewhat depressed, often shy and nervous, and constantly wondering if they offer any value to the clan.

Once a female turns 15, she is old enough to become one of the clan breeders. Usually, this involves being impregnated and laying her first clutch of eggs. These will become her "gift" to the clan, if the individuals born of this clutch show promise she will be placed in the lines of breeding. This is the goal of any younger salarian female, and they will resort to whatever it takes to achieve it.

Once they are breeding regularly, their minds fixate solely on the preservation of their clutch and clan, and ensuring advantage that leads to more opportunities for the same. Salarian females become more inflexible as they age, seeing themselves as the sole arbiters of life and acting as measuring sticks for salarian males. Being surrounded your whole life by people who literally live to impress you and serve you makes most females very unfit to judge the intent and purpose of those who are alien.

Finally, a key aspect of the female mindset is the understanding that as long as the clutch survives, the race survives. Salarian females will sacrifice almost everything in daring gambles for the ability to secure an advantage if they can be sure they will survive the outcome, regardless of the risk or damage. Unlike humans, who prefer that risk balances reward, salarians will engage in acts that on the surface seem too risky to chance, with the understanding that in a few short years any losses can be made up with a new generation of salarian offspring.

* * *

**Emotional Shifts**

Salarian emotions are powerful and mercurial. They sweep through a salarian and then move on quickly. The salarian mind, processing multiple lines of thought at once, doesn't slow down enough to allow long-term reflection.

Salarians can be angry, sad, or morose, or they can be happy and excited. Many salarians try to keep a tight rein on their emotions, as once they get carried away by them they can often go to extremes that normally they would not engage in.

Linking with them is fraught with danger, as the salarian mind is ever-shifting in how it views and interprets the cascades of data their nerves give them. I believe it is this overwhelming sensory input that drives them to move beyond emotions rapidly.

That being said, salarians are certainly not emotionless. While they move through emotional states quickly, 'quickly' can be a relative term. A salarian who loses a good friend will be sad for several days rather than weeks, one who loses an lover might take months to recover rather than years. Likewise, emotional flashpoints are also reached much quicker – salarians have, as a rule, hair-trigger tempers.

The salarian's mercurial emotional state also provides them with defenses against mental illnesses and the like. Salarians can be paranoid, but that is the only known real mental illness they suffer, and many of them view such paranoia as a survival instinct.

* * *

**Salarian Ethics and Morality**

Oh, Ms. Lawson's dry wit is at times a bit sharply razored for my taste, but she does have a certain faculty with words. Her view of salarian ethics was expressed to me as "the idea that if it's possible to achieve an act, however reprehensible, then it's possible to find a way to cover up doing it" struck me as apt.

Salarians do not have a word for 'ethics', and they have several words for morality. To them, morals are a measure of things that are good or bad. Murder, theft, treason, etc are bad. Working together, cooperation, respect, etc are good. The difference, in salarian minds, is that good and bad are merely properties, not absolutes.

A murder that saves ten lives is not 'bad' in salarian eyes. Theft of a product that wasn't properly protected is merely prudence. The viewing of morality as a property of an action, not something inherent in the action, reduces most salarian activities to merely balancing benefits versus costs. Salarians have no concept of the human idea of "sin" and see morality more as a method of determining if a given course of action's drawbacks outweigh it's costs.

The exposure of salarians to alien cultures, particularly the guilt-ridden and ancestor-worshiping turians, did not introduce any hesitance in salarians to go to any lengths possible to achieve their goals, but did introduce a concept called 'mithra'. Mithra is the closest thing salarians have to an ethical framework, and it's premise is abominable – as long as an act cannot be traced back to the originator, evil is non-existent. It is the logical follow through to a concept that only accountability imparts guilt, and that only the observer can judge actions.

Salarians will perform any act, no matter it's brutality, and as long as they aren't caught doing it, they do not see it as a crime. On the flip side, salarians who commit illegal or unethical acts and are apprehended or otherwise identified are seen as failures and surrendered for punishment or executed.

The crime is not in the act, but in allowing the act to be seen. I cannot say that this mindset is particularly understandable to me, or in fact to any other alien species. Even batarians understand that murder is morally wrong, and they do it because they see other races as lesser beings, not because they feel murder is acceptable. Salarians, on the other hand, will happily murder even each other on an individual basis if it strengthens the clan family and have no qualms about any form of act if they can cover it up.

This is, sadly, my main reason for not really having a problem with Cerberus – the most disgusting and vile actions your group has taken would not stir the sands of the beach compared to the monstrosities the salarians engage in. Living vivisections, experiments on children, twice enabling genocide and the creation of the Disimulat nano-plague weapons are just few of the things that can be laid at their feet. Salarians operating within Eclipse have turned that group from the mere darkness of Jona Sedris's anger to drug-running slavers, murderers, and arsonists, and the premier mercenary groups of salarian origin like Foresight and Unlimited have taken some of the most criminal contracts in history. Only salarians would make money from capturing poor people and using them to create organ farms.

Not all salarians embody this form of ethics. Some of the more eccentric salarians have taken up religious or philosophical stances that impart a different level or focus in ethical behavior. Additionally, most salarians in the medical care industry have in recent years taken up your human mantra of "first, do no harm" when it comes to the practice of medicine and biomedical research. However, these salarians are an extreme minority, and even they will often times be a part of research or operations that seem deeply unethical or immoral to most other races.

* * *

**Salarian sexuality, romance, and love**

The conventional wisdom is that salarians do not have a sex drive, which is completely untrue. However, the salarian sex drive is utterly unlike that of most other species, and is entirely driven by the female, not the male.

Female salarians regularly go into heat, during which time they emit very strong pheromones that attract and arouse male salarians. In ancient times, females in heat were literally unable to control themselves. Since the biological makeup of salarian sexuality requires the female to be fertilized multiple times, this resulted in females being passed around fairly often and raids being staged to steal them.

In the modern area, females are secluded from males once they go into heat, and only those males who have been approved to breed (based on a host of factors, such as intellect, achievements, and the like) are allowed into their quarters. Once properly aroused by the pheromone discharges, salarians are actually quite sexually aggressive. The females have the stronger sex drives, often engaging in sexual activity with between six to ten males in a given breeding session for a clutch. Given each heat usually requires the fertilization of between nine and twelve clutches, a female may end up going through over a hundred male partners. Given that the ratio of females to males is nearly 1 to 100, and that not all females are allowed to breed or are breeding, even this high ratio does not ensure all males get a chance to participate, especially since some females take the same male more than once.

These sexual relationship are not in anyway romantic, they are pleasurable and also a mark and reward for the male, but tender emotional states do not come into play.

Salarians rarely have a form of the nuclear family, in what is called a yindo, or a breeding circle. This is basically the salarian version of marriage, practiced by what mainstream salarian culture views as deviants. These relationships are usually between lesser salarian males who have no chance of breeding with a clan female and the females denied the opportunity to breed by the dalatrasses. In these close-knit yindos, there is a great deal of bonding, and even gentle affection. Being incapacitated by the heats she has to undergo, the female depends almost entirely on the males for both care and income, while the males, constantly bombarded by pheromones, end up devoted to the female to truly incredible degrees. Yindos are far more common on worlds where salarians are immigrants, and especially on the so-called Black Fringe colonies, along the border with what used to be Rachni space. A yindo is limited, eventually the offspring allow it to turn into a small clan, and after a few generations of breeding they become indistinguishable from a normal breeding line.

A very few salarians (usually males, and eccentric males at that, but rarely a female denied breeding rights) will end up with alien partners, usually asari. Salarians are usually attracted by intellectual capacity, physical agility and the ability to keep up with their thinking. While they are truly not very good lovers in a purely physical sense, they are very devoted to their partner, and often surprisingly sweet. I would like to think, somewhere along the way, even the mazes of a salarian mind can find romance.

That is not to say that salarians don't understand or feel love! They love their children, almost fiercely, defending them with a savagery that shocks those unused to seeing anything like strong emotion from salarians. They are not the best parents – often demanding and serious, and rarely taking the time to truly interest themselves in the interests of their children – but they can be surprisingly inventive when it comes to a birthday party or other method to cheer them up.

Nor can I say with any certainty that salarians don't love their extended clan families. I have seen salarians endure torture that would break a krogan and still not sell out even the financial interests of their families. Even the most sadistic, eccentric and criminal salarian would rather die in agony than betray their family.

* * *

**Salarian and aliens**

Most salarians view aliens as different, and as a source of danger. There is no such thing as a salarian letting down their guard. Asari and salarians have been allies for thousands of years and I suspect the salarians still don't fully trust us.

Salarian viewpoints on asari are varied. As Dr. Minsta pointed out in an earlier document, asari and salarians are both unlike and alike. Our viewpoints on the interpretation of the universe is very different, but our focus on methods other than force is similar. Generally speaking, the salarians tend to feel asari are the closest matched to themselves in terms of intellect and overall potential.

Salarians dislike, and have always disliked, quarians. Not just because quarian technology nearly matched their own, but because salarians improve things in slow increments and the quarians were geniuses capable of creating breakthrough technologies overnight. Salarians also dislike how the quarians experiments lead to the geth, which reminds them of their own AI failures.

Salarians have a curious relationship with krogan. The two races do not get along – most salarians feel krogan are ignorant, savage brutes, a tool with no real use left it. And the krogan see most salarians as murderers and blame them genophage on them. On the other hand, many salarians also feel vaguely sad over the ends the krogan have come to. More than once I have seen a salarian staring at the Krogan Monument on the Citadel, and walk away regretfully.

The drell, volus, and hanar don't make much of an impression on salarians from what little I know. They simply interact too little, and too infrequently.

The salarians view the batarians and the humans in much the same light, oddly – as military oriented brutes. As insulting as that comparison probably is, from the salarian point of view such a thing should be taken as a complement. The salarians see humans and batarians as the most dangerous elements in modern galactic society, and as a result take your kind more seriously.


	17. Chapter 17 - Salarian Physiology

**A/N: **_ Tired now, so I'll probably not produce anything for a few days._

* * *

**The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space **

Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING

HERA-SIX-NINE-NINE

ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED

Beloved Jack, fierce Richard, and cunning Rachel,

If there is one aspect where Dr. Minsta is probably better served than myself in writing this research, it would be in the aspect of biology. I am not a medical doctor, and my understanding of salarians is strictly limited to what I've absorbed from reading several digests and extranet studies on salarian biology.

That being said, much of the information here was gathered by Ms. Lawson. She really is very flexible in terms of learning – I was not aware most humans had such formidable intellectual capacities. If she is anything like your average young human , then your fear of being overtaken by aliens can probably be set aside, as she would compare favorably to , well, a salarian!

I'm sure that will irritate you as well. In a few more days, we'll go onwards from Mannovai to Sur'Kesh, and we'll see how well Ms. Lawson handles the awesome size of the Reach.

**Cerberus Thought for the Day: **One must be ruthless to assure a given outcome. Mercy has never led to anything but vulnerability.

* * *

**Salarian basic physiology**

As stated in the history section, salarians are omnivorous creatures most closely related to earth salamanders. They are roughly humanoid, with a wide range of builds and heights, but most fall between 5 and a half to 6 feet tall, and are usually slender, weighing no more than a hundred pounds.

That is not absolute – I once had a run in with a truly-frightening minion of the Shadow Broker, a body-building salarian that stood well over seven feet tall and was built like a krogan – but very few salarians are heavily muscled.

The salarian skeleton is almost entirely made of cartilaginous materials, stiffened at the hips, shoulders, upper arm and lower leg with 'floating bones' that bind to the skeletal material by tendons. The cartilaginous material is highly regenerative, but the rest of the salarian body is not. They are extremely flexible, all of the joints being either double jointed or complete ball joints, and the bones have considerable flexibility when put under pressure. The salarian skull is also reinforced with some bone, as well as shock absorbing muscles and damping fluids. The spine is also bone, and shallow ribs encase the vital organs, although the chest is bowed inwards.

The salarian stands on two digitigrade legs, with enough spinal flexion to allow 240 degrees of walking motion. The legs hook back at the knee, the feet ending in a curiously clublike foot with three digits tipped with long claws. The arch of the foot is very high, with only the toes and the shank of the heel making actual ground contact, giving salarians both a light step and an almost mincing gait. The entire ankle and knee joint assemblies are merely radioulnar articulated joints, a pack of lumpy balls of cartilage linked together with many tendons and ligaments, much like the human wrist. This means salarians can make a number of flexible, unusual motions that other races cannot.

The salarian skin is very thin and semi-translucent, ranging in tones from pale white and cream down to dark black. The skin is very heavily lined with capillaries, and is rather fragile. Below the skin, the muscles are highly striated bundles of paired groups, roped together with bands of nerves that allow salarians astonishingly fine muscle control.

Salarian blood is green, and is the most remarkable part of their physiology. The blood is hemocyanatic and uses copper rather than iron to bind oxygen. This is about 15% as effective as iron (or bauxite) and leads to salarians not being able to support heavy muscle masses in most cases. However, there are also symbiotic organisms in the blood that bind to carbon dioxide and some blood toxins and produce additional oxygen directly into the bloodstream. As a result, even with the copper binding of oxygen, a salarian is often better oxygenated than other races when fully rested.

Salarians who do a great deal of physical labor tend to produce more dense concentrations of blood cells to carry oxygen, allowing them greater muscle mass in return. However, the stress this puts on the body appears to shorten the lifespan. Salarian muscle tissue is very quick-contraction in nature, allowing the salarian to take advantage of their reflexes, but it is not very strong, and without a firm skeletal structure, even strong salarians have the body strength of an below average human.

The salarian brain is perhaps the most developed of any Citadel species. It is heavily folded, even more than asari brains, and surprisingly compact, as it has no older evolutionary throwbacks taking up space in the slender skull. The brain stem actually travels down half the spine, and smaller nodules of brain material surround the base of the skull. These nodules work with the main brain mass to allow salarians to process multiple lines of thought at one time. Salarian neural complexity is extremely complex, with multiphase protein sheaths encasing most neuron cells and gilial cells. These sheaths allow each cell to store and recreate multiple synapse pairs on the fly – as a result, salarians not only posses photographic memories but can even model higher order mathematics (geometry, trigonometry and most calculus) in their heads with no difficulty.

Salarians do not nurse their young, and as such, have no mammary glands nor nipples.

The salarian metabolism is much faster than other races, with the salarian version of ATP having nineteen times the efficiency of ATP mitochondria in humans and asari. Salarians also have a glandular system with a wide array of adrenal and renal functions, capable of flooding the body with a potent array of enzymes, adrenaline, and endorphins. This allows salarians to reach truly amazing levels of speed and fluidity in a short amount of time.

The salarian nervous system is extremely complicated, with a well developed nervous system and neural coordination bundles (like a human cerebellum) , packed with climbing fibers and a fluid-balance system that ensures salarians rarely if ever lose their balance.

The salarian immune system is linked with a lymph-like series of veins that wind in and out of the salarian bloodstream, connecting with a liver-like organ and a triple pair of filtering organs that serve a similar function to kidneys. The blood of salarians is filtered for toxins at all times, moving through the system at key points, making most salarians very resistant to disease and toxins.

The salarian heart is , like an asari's heart, three chambered. But salarians have two of them , one in the upper chest and one in the lower torso. The salarian lung is singular, a large sac that lines the entire back and sides of the chest, and is comprised of air-trapping pockets and mucous membranes.

The salarian digestive system is simple, a muscle-constricting and acid filled stomach, leading to a tube that absorbs minerals and exiting through the cloaca.

* * *

**Salarian senses**

Salarian senses are hypersensitive, and significantly better than other races. Salarian eyesight is far superior to human or even turian eyesight, allowing them to perceive not only full color but UV and infrared radiation. Salarians can also see most powerful electromagnetic fields with the naked eyes.

The salarian horns are actually ears, hollow structures filled with sound-conducting fluids and lined with directionally oriented sensor hairs. Salarians can pick up and track multiple sounds and fix their exact bearing and distance from as much as a half mile.

Salarian smell is predator level, and salarians can track a being by scent in even low concentrations, and the nasal passages have concentrations of olfactory sensory cells in concentrations that rival that of genetically bred bloodhounds. Likewise, their sense of taste is well developed.

They lack the _arahal_, or the asari ability to feel electrical energy on the winds, but they have other senses the asari or humans do not. They can track and feel minute vibrations , on the air or under ground, and they seem to have a natural sense for direction.

On the whole, salarian senses combined with their very fine motor control mean they can do feats other races simply cannot. How much of this is natural and how much of it was initiated by breeding experiments of the clan families is unknown.

On the balance, however, and given the research we've been able to do into salarian evolution, I can say that the salarians are almost certainly modifying themselves in such ways. The utter control the dalatrasses have over most breeding insures that if they wish to make themselves into a given state, they have the technology and ability to do so. Salarians are constantly pushing for trans-mortal changes, and I believe they have a long range breeding program that will eventually result in salarian super soldiers.

* * *

**Salarian reactions and agility**

Salarians have very fast reflexes, and almost unrealistic levels of agility and dexterity, owing to their final muscle control. As a result, salarians are not only blindingly fast, but are capable of feats of mobility that would leave lesser races gasping to keep up.

A salarian's nerve system is overlaid with neural coordination bundles packed with climbing fibers. These are reflex-stimulus structures – you humans have a bundle in your cerebellum that aids in balance and coordination. The salarian body is literally stuffed with them, and they act involuntarily but with voluntary overrides.

In effect, salarian reflexes are nearly perfect. Most can make a mockery of attempting to attack them in close quarters – connecting would do some real damage, but only the very fastest combatants can have a chance of doing so. Their hand eye coordination is so astounding that it must be seen to be believed, as salarians can make shots with pistols that would challenge a turian sniper, and salarian snipers are so deadly that even krogan hesitate when targeted by them.

As if this were not enough, however, the salarian senses are tied directly into this system of reflexes. Sounds, motions, and even air pressure are enough to trigger reflexive avoidance and maneuver. I've seen salarians laughing as they dodge the enraged swings of a priestess's biotic sword, watched them outmaneuver drell assassins while mockingly offering tips before one-hit killing them, and outrun light armored vehicles.

Salarians make for astounding pilots , drivers, and ranged combatants, and their reaction times are only enhanced by the complexity of the salarian brain.

* * *

**Salarian Weaknesses **

The salarian body is clearly engineered as a high response, high speed and high agility platform. I am sorry but I can't think of it as a body so much as a damned abomination. While other races have played with transasari (or, I suppose in your case, transhuman) concepts, only the salarians would actually proceed down this path.

Thankfully, nature's spirit does not allow herself to be profaned in such a galling manner without the proper recompense.

Salarians are not strong, nor do they handle physical damage very well. While they can flood their bodies with endorphins and natural painkillers when hurt, and adrenaline to boost their strength, even the toughest salarian can't take more than one or two serious wounds before collapsing. The high metabolic rate and naturally high blood pressure salarians have works against them when they are hurt, and their ability to produce adrenaline in life-or-death situations can be exhausted in pitched battles.

Salarians are almost immune to most poisons and toxins, and many diseases, but they have high vulnerability to some forms of alkaline substances that disrupt their body chemistry. Additionally, salarians don't handle sedatives well, as the salarian body ends up having mismatched rhythms and can go into systemic shock.

Salarian organ systems have no redundancy – perhaps, if they were engineered, this is the salarian parsimonious desire for clean efficiency. The result, of course, is that salarians who are hurt are usually incapacitated. A human shot in the arm or leg is hurt but can still fight. A krogan will regenerate it in seconds, turians have plating to deflect it and asari can usually compensate with biotics. Salarians, on the other hand, are usually down for the count. Even a strong punch can knock one out.

The flexible nature of the salarian frame lets them withstand explosions better than others, but becomes a liability in any contest of strength, and a lethal drawback when exposed to heavy biotic physics attacks like slam. Salarians cannot handle G forces very well and make poor fighter pilots, despite their excellent hand-eye coordination.

* * *

**Salarian reproduction**

I'm sure Dr. Minsta would have appreciated the chance to prate about salarian "infidelity", but the salarian reproductive method is actually quite boring to me.

As I stated in the psychology section, salarian females go into heat around age fifteen, and undergo additional heats every two months until they are in their very late 30's, at which age they finally lose their fertility. During the heat, they exude mating pheromones to attract male salarians.

The male's sexual organs are fairly standard, an erectile sheath leading from the equivalent of testicles. Salarian males keep these tucked within the body until sexual activity is likely, unlike human and krogan males. The female sexual organ is part of the cloaca, which is also used to evacuate solid and liquid wastes from the body. Quite primitive, and I'm frankly astonished the salarians haven't engineered something more … elegant. Or at least, less messy.

Each female has various egg clutches within her body. The ovaries are much larger than in other races, fist sized, and will produce eggs regularly until around 37 or 38 years of age. Each ovary (and there are six) produces about 20 eggs. Each egg must be fertilized separately, and once an egg is fertilized by a male, enzymes lock the cellular surfaces of all other eggs to that male's sperm. As a result, a female usually requires at least four to six breeding sessions with multiple males to fertilize the entire clutch.

Eggs grow rapidly into metastasis within a day of breeding, doubling in size every four hours, and are "laid" in clumps on the third day, again (ugh) through the cloaca. The eggs are encased in a slimy sac of nutrients and protective enzymes – highly poisonous to everything on Sur'Kesh, and probably not very tasty to anything else either. The eggs absorb the nutrients, drying out and soldifying in two days, and take another five months to grow to full size, erupting into salarian newts.

* * *

**Salarian life cycle**

A newt is an apt name, as upon hatching, the legs are fused together in one mass, and the eyes do not work. Over the first six months of life, the legs separate, the eyes develop fully and open, and neural activity starts up around the first week. Even with modern technology and great care, something like 40% of the eggs laid do not develop to full term, and must be destroyed.

A salarian male child takes about 12 years to grow to physical maturity, a female takes about 15. However, salarians develop much faster mentally. By the time they are nine months old they can usually walk, talk, and read, and by three years old are capable of understanding basic math, spatial relationships, and logic.

At around maturity, salarians undergo a growth spurt. For males, the penis develops, and for females, the ovaries activate, and she goes into her first heat.

Males do not have any other noticeable physical changes until they are around 40 years old, at which time the body simply begins to break down. Some salarians have lived past this stage – the more fit and healthy a salarian is, the more likely they are to live longer – but few males live much past 50. Females go barren at around 37 or 38, moving into the realm of politics fully, and usually begin breaking down at about 45.

* * *

**Salarian life span  
**

Just in my own life, I've seen the average age of salarians who die go from the late 30's to the late 40's. This doesn't sound very impressive, until you compare relative lifespans. Humans went from a life expectancy of about 70 to around 150, which is more than double – however, if you adjust for poverty, for colony life, and the like, almost a full third of humanity dies before 70 even today. Only the rich, powerful, and successful reach 150, with most middle class humans having about 90 pain-free years of living before another 15 or 20 years of decrepitude.

Salarians only increased their lifespan by 25%, but this is true of almost all salarians, regardless of economic status or location. Furthermore, they don't experience any real slowdown or effects of aging until a few months before death.

On the surface, the salarian life span is quite limited, and any improvement seems like it's a good thing. However, there is a dark side to this. What I am about to tell you is – well, was – a state secret of the Asari Republics. About thirty five years ago, the Council of Matriarchs gained intelligence suggesting salarians were experimenting on asari captives. I was part of the Royal Strike Force engaged to go after the suspected laboratory, and what we saw there was absolutely sickening. The salarians had captured asari – mostly Eclipse members, a few red sand addicts, and at least one outcast – and had been engaged in research into asari regeneration and our ability to cap our DNA with telomerase. This substance is what determines how many times a cell can divide before it wears out, for lack of a better word. Salarian cells , like asari cells, reproduce rapidly. But in salarians, their enormous metabolic rate ends up killing cells off almost as fast as they reproduce, and they burn through them in a few short decades.

It looks like the salarians have been working on extending the salarian lifespan. Not by leaps and bounds, but sustainably and slowly, and in a way that wouldn't attract too much attention. We asari destroyed the labs, but we were unable to tie the researchers back to the actual Salarian Union, and the STG turned up nothing in their own investigation.

* * *

**Salarians and disease**

The interlinked salarian immune system, combined with the constant blood filtering, means that salarians have a very strong resistance to most diseases. The two that continue to affect them the most are the Soft Rot and the Collapse Plague.

Soft Rot is a skin disorder, caused by parasitic organisms infest the skin , forming colonies of acidic mold between the skin and the muscle. Painful and disfiguring, Soft Rot ends up eating away at muscle mass and producing enough toxins to kill a salarian in short order. It can be combated with powerful antibiotics and broad-based antiseptic purges using injections under the skin, but it grows very rapidly and can kill in a handful of days.

The Collapse Plague is not actually a plague, but a fungal prion that is inhaled through the lungs. These misfolded proteins enter the salarian bloodstream and cause blood cells to debond with the copper in the blood. The result is large amounts of copper in the feces and urine, and the loss of the blood's ability to carry oxygen. It leaves a salarian disoriented from organ shutdown (due to copper poisoning) and lack of oxygen, and swiftly leads to brain damage and death.

There is no known cure or vaccine for the Collapse Plague, which first erupted during the Collapse. It is believed to be caused by decaying egg piles or salarian corpses , which is one reason salarians are so picky about funeral rituals.

* * *

**Salarians and modifications**

Given salarian fragility, it should come as no surprise that cybernetics are very big with salarians. Most salarian soldiers , at the very least, go for implanted kinetic sheathing, armor plating, sometimes a complete arm replacement with gyro-balancers if they are snipers.

Salarians will sometimes sacrifice one eye for a cybereye, especially ones that can see in spectrums salarians cannot, or that includes cameras or other useful hardware. Salarians often invest heavily in biomedical systems, including medigel injectors and nanorepair paste, as well as complete nanosurgeon systems to stem internal blood loss.

Salarian senses are good enough they rarely need augmentation, but some salarians have swapped out most of their natural muscles, one group at a time, with artificial myomer, giving them much greater strength than normal salarians.

Salarians, as a rule, dislike bio-augmentation that relies on actual biological components. I'm not sure why, but it's worth noting that there aren't even any salarian companies doing work on this front.

* * *

**Salarian body disorders**

Aside from sickness, salarians sometimes have a nervous system disorder called "Shego's Fire". Shego had this affliction herself in later life, giving it a touch of holy reverence, but it is completely debilitating.

The disorder is caused by a slow breakdown of neural lining, followed by neural degeneration across the entire brain and nervous system. In the early stages, the effects are minor – tremors, the occasional missing memory. But when it hits the late stages, the mind begins to go. Eventually, psychosis and paranoid ravings set in, along with gruesome savagery and bouts of wild, uncontrollable anger and fear.

There is no good treatment for this disease, other than hoping the salarian dies before it runs it's course.


	18. Author Note

Author Note:

All of the rest of my stories have been put on semi-permanent hiatus. I will still update the Cerberus Files but the pace will be very, very slow. If anyone at all is interested in picking it up from me where I've started I'd be glad to hand it over.


End file.
